Taipei, Taiwan – After silencing Hong Kong’s pro-democracy motion, authorities within the territory have discovered a brand new goal: the members of the family of dissidents who fled abroad.
As pro-democracy Hong Kongers proceed their activism in self-imposed exile, police are turning their consideration to their households, pals, and associates nonetheless dwelling within the metropolis.
Final month, Hong Kong police introduced a a million Hong Kong greenback ($128,888) reward for info resulting in the arrest of eight overseas-based dissidents needed for nationwide safety offences, prompting condemnation from human rights organisations and Western governments.
Since then, nationwide safety police have raided the household houses of at the very least 4 of the needed activists – businessman Elmer Yeun, commerce unionist Christopher Mung, and former legislators Nathan Legislation and Dennis Kwok – and introduced in additional than a dozen members of the family for questioning.
On Thursday, authorities raided houses belonging to members of the family of Yeun, who is predicated in the US, for a second time in little over every week, taking in his ex-wife and son for questioning after earlier interrogating his son, daughter and daughter-in-law.
No arrests have been made following the raids.
The eight suspects – who additionally embrace lawyer Kevin Yam, ex-legislator Ted Hui, and activists Anna Kwok and Finn Lau – face a spread of vaguely-defined offences, together with overseas collusion and subversion, underneath Kong’s sweeping nationwide safety regulation (NSL), which has all however worn out opposition to Beijing since its passage in 2020.
Most of the offences they’re accused of underneath the Beijing-drafted laws, which claims jurisdiction over each particular person on the planet, relate to acts carried out exterior of town.
Hong Kong authorities’ shift to concentrating on households is the newest signal of town’s rising alignment with the authoritarian techniques of the Chinese language mainland, the place households and pals of dissidents are sometimes harassed by police and pressured to encourage their family members to return to China or cease their activism, activists say.
“Now [Hong Kong police] behave just like the safety equipment within the mainland,” Chongyi Feng, an affiliate professor in China research on the College of Know-how, Sydney, informed Al Jazeera. “It’s precisely what they name the ‘mainlandisation’ of Hong Kong politics and governance.”
China’s ruling Communist occasion has lengthy been recognized for its efforts to silence dissent abroad.
Uighur activists akin to Rebiya Kadeer and Zumrat Dawut have spoken publicly about their households in China dealing with intimidation because of their advocacy towards Beijing.
In April, the US justice division charged 44 folks in China and overseas over the “transnational repression” of Chinese language dissidents allegedly topic to harassment whereas dwelling within the US.
Hong Kong Police Drive didn’t reply to a request for remark in time for publication.
The police have beforehand informed media retailers that they’ve questioned members of the family of fugitives on suspicion of “helping individuals needed by police to proceed to commit acts and have interaction in actions that endanger nationwide safety”.
Even after Hong Kong’s return to Chinese language sovereignty in 1997, the previous British colony for many years retained a vibrant civic life, political variety and one of the trusted authorized programs in Asia underneath an association referred to as “one nation, two programs”.
For the reason that imposition of the NSL following usually violent antigovernment protests in 2019, free speech and meeting rights have been radically curtailed and demanding voices have all however vanished the political and media panorama.
All bets off
So far as pro-democracy figures are involved, all bets are off – for each themselves and their households.
“You might sacrifice your self on your personal political views,” mentioned Feng, who was detained for 10 days whereas visiting China in 2017 and has had his household and 90-year-old mom within the nation visited by police.
“However when your loved ones members or pals have been subjected to torture or punishment, you’ll develop a robust sense of guilt that you simply’re bringing bother to your kinfolk and to your family members. That could be a very brutal tactic utilized by dictatorships.”
Eric Lai, a Hong Kong-born nonresident fellow at Georgetown Middle for Asian Legislation, mentioned that questioning dissidents’ households and placing up bounties and needed posters for his or her arrest had extra to do with sending a message than typical regulation enforcement actions.
“If you’re investigating cash laundering or [organised] crimes, then you’ll not announce who you’re going to interrogate to alert fugitives and needed individuals,” Lai informed Al Jazeera. “So, it’s extra like a political present.”
Hui, the self-exiled former legislator, mentioned he had been visited 3 times by police earlier than fleeing to Europe with the assistance of Danish legislators whereas on bail pending trial for protest-related costs.
“Within the three months earlier than I left Hong Kong … I had police morning raids, which means that they knock in your door at 5 or 6 within the morning, then arrested me, handcuffed me, and questioned me, and searched my house whereas my spouse and my children have been there,” Hui informed Al Jazeera.
“The primary time was fairly terrifying as a result of my household by no means skilled that. The second time and the third time we have been alerted and type of being ready once we heard that knocking. So my spouse was like, ‘It’s them once more. It have to be,’” he mentioned.
Hui mentioned his dad and mom, spouse, kids and sister all now reside in Australia with him, however different activists are usually not so fortunate.
“I’ve been involved with fairly just a few of them and, sure, a few of the youthful ones, those with out that a lot expertise of being issued arrest warrants, they’re a bit extra nervous about private security,” he mentioned. “However I feel the key issue remains to be that they nonetheless have members of the family in Hong Kong, they usually’ve been harassed, they’ve been questioned. I feel that’s the most important factor.”
Yeun, Mung, Legislation, Yam, Lau, and Dennis and Anna Kwok didn’t reply to requests for remark.
In a latest opinion piece within the Australian newspaper, The Age, Yam, whose household is with him in Australia, mentioned that he had scaled again social media exercise and eliminated followers who had labored for the Hong Kong authorities or could assist Beijing.
“A lot of my pals have been jailed just because they needed rights that we in Australia take without any consideration,” he mentioned. “Dwelling as a citizen of a liberal democracy, I owe it to courageous Hong Kongers to proceed talking out for them till Hong Kong is free.”
For the households of exiles nonetheless in Hong Kong, they’ve little authorized recourse, in accordance with a former lawyer there who spoke on situation of anonymity.
“There’s nothing that an individual who’s been taken in for questioning or just arrested after which not charged, can do,” the lawyer Al Jazeera. “They don’t have any particular plan of action they will take until it quantities to one thing like false imprisonment.”
“The police, figuring out that they will’t bodily go after these people who find themselves abroad, are simply making an attempt to do all the pieces that they will to harass them, which is by placing their claws into their members of the family and no matter property they’ve left in Hong Kong,” the lawyer added.
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