UK MP deported from African nation as ‘direct consequence’ of Chinese sanctions

Tim Loughton, a sitting MP of Britain’s ruling Conservative Party who has been sanctioned by China, has revealed that he was detained and deported from Djibouti shortly after his arrival in the East African nation as a “direct consequence” of the latter’s close ties with Beijing.

Loughton, who has been the Conservative MP for East Worthing and Shoreham since 1997, told The Daily Telegraph that the incident that occurred on April 8 was “no accident but instead a direct consequence of being one of the seven British parliamentarians sanctioned by China now over three years ago”.

According to the MP, the sanctions were imposed on him and the six others for “speaking out against the industrial scale human rights abuses by the Chinese Communist government against the Uyghurs, Tibetans and now, increasingly, those from Hong Kong”.

Djibouti, Africa’s smallest nation, has received billions of dollars of investment from China, including a new stadium, hospital and $1 billion spaceport, The Daily Telegraph reported.

The Asian giant has also built a naval base in Djibouti, stationed 2,000 troops there and holds more than $1.4 billion of the nation’s debt, which is 45 per cent of its GDP.

The former Minister told The Daily Telegraph that he had arrived in Djibouti from the neighbouring Somaliland on April 8 for a 24-hour visit to meet the British Ambassador to the country.

He said he was the first to get off the plane and proceeded to complete the immigration formalities and collect his visa.

“I politely explained that I would be in the country for barely 24 hours, and was being picked up at the airport by a tour guide… But as soon as I revealed I was a British MP, and my passport was checked, things turned decidedly frosty,” he told the newspaper.

The Conservative Party MP said he was held for an hour without any explanation in the arrivals’ hall, after which an immigration officer ushered him to a holding room where he was locked in and detained alone for three hours.

“They gave me no reason. I kept saying: ‘Why?’ and they could not tell me… In short, it was a highly intimidating and very lonely experience in a very strange country.”

“In the circumstances, I failed to make it beyond the immigration desk and airport tarmac from which I was abruptly deported without explanation after over seven hours in rather frightening detention.”

Loughton further said that he had raised the issue with the UK’s Deputy Foreign Secretary Andrew Mitchell and also wrote to the Djibouti envoy via the Foreign Office to protest about the “outrageous” behaviour.

However, a Chinese embassy spokesperson said the allegations were “purely baseless” and called them “fabricated and slanderous rhetoric that attempts to smear China and poison China-UK relations”, the Guardian reported.