Vietnam police plan to send back to China Liu Linna, a popular human rights activist also known as Liu Shasha, who illegally entered the country to be with her husband.

Authorities detained Liu in a hotel following her trip from Guangxi into Vietnam in November last year to meet her husband, an activist based in Hong Kong.

Like Us on Facebook

Liu told media she has to pay a fine of 4 million Vietnam dong (US$180) before she is deported. China has banned her from leaving while her husband has been banned from entering China, virtually ensuring they cannot live together as a couple.

Her husband, Yeung Hung, is banned from traveling to the mainland China. The couple had been moving around illegally to see each other, since authorities took back his permit to cross into mainland.

A former British colony, Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Region that keeps immigration controls with the mainland.

Yeung and Liu said they tried to find a way to be together before the Chinese New Year but their efforts proved futile. Yeung said tighter border controls may be due to the migration of ethnic Muslim Uighurs to Vietnam.

Vietnam has been returning Uighurs to China to stop the flow of escapees.

In December 2013, police nabbed Yeung in the border city of Shenzhen in Guangdong, as he was trying to reach the mainland from Hong Kong to meet Liu. He was in prison for eight months for crossing a border illegally.

Authorities revoked Yeung's mainland travel permit after he and his wife tried to visit Liu Xia, the partner of jailed Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo, who is detained in her house in Beijing.