HONG KONG (Sapa-dpa) - The Hong Kong government was Sunday urged to review a decision to allow the daughter of Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe live and study in the city.

Bona Mugabe - whose father is banned from travelling to Britain, the US and Europe - has been studying at the University of Hong Kong since the autumn, according to the Sunday Morning Post newspaper.

The presence of Ms Mugabe in Hong Kong emerged after her 43-year- old mother Grace 10 days ago allegedly assaulted freelance photographer Richard Jones as he took pictures of her shopping while on a visit to the city.

Robert Mugabe also reportedly visited Hong Kong in August - when his daughter would have first arrived to take up her university place -before being refused permission to fly on to China for the Olympic Games.

Senior Hong Kong legislator Emily Lau Wai-hing called for a review over the decision to admit Ms Mugabe, who is studying under an assumed name and whose identity is not known to fellow students.

Australia last year deported eight students whose parents were senior members of the Mugabe regime, saying it wanted to prevent those involved in human rights abuses giving their children education denied to ordinary Zimbabweans.

Zimbabwe is currently in the grips of a cholera epidemic and has been in political turmoil since Mugabe last year refused to accept the outcome of a presidential election apparently won by his rival Morgan Tsvangirai.

Asked about Ms Mugabe's admission, a University of Hong Kong spokeswoman said: "We believe that education should be above politics and young people should not be denied of the rights to education because of their family background or what their parents have done."

She also denied there had been any negative reaction from fellow students to the presence of Ms Mugabe, who is aged around 20, saying:

"We are not aware of any reactions relating to the case you refer to.

"We believe that many of our students will share our belief of right of education for everybody and our view that people should not be responsible for what other members of their family have done."

A university official, who asked not to be named, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur that Ms Mugabe - who has returned to Zimbabwe with her mother for the Chinese New Year holiday - had enrolled under a different name and many students were unaware of her presence.

When she returns to Hong Kong, the university would "keep a watchful eye more from a student life perspective", the official said.

Legislator Emily Lau called for a debate over the admission of students such as Ms Mugabe. "Because there is (currently) no policy, obviously anybody can come to study in Hong Kong. Nobody has ever raised this issue.

"If a regime is so atrocious and responsible for the deaths and suffering of so many people every day, maybe there should be a way for us in Hong Kong to show our repugnance. Many people find Zimbabwe a very, very obnoxious regime."

Ms Mugabe's presence has provoked an outcry from some residents with one writing to a Sunday newspaper: "Send her back to be educated by the system that her father destroyed.

"Could the (government) indicate why it allowed the daughter of a man who has so much blood on his hands to come to Hong Kong in the first place?"

However, Law Yuk Kai, director of Human Rights Monitor in Hong Kong, said: "A child who has not done anything wrong should not be asked to take the burden of the wrongs of their parents.

"I don't think because there is a problem back home and their parents have this kind of issues, corruption or so on, there should be an embargo extended to deny a child a chance to study abroad."

Asked about Bona Mugabe and the visits of her parents to Hong Kong, a government spokeswoman replied: "We do not comment on individual cases."