Hong Kong Takes Its Crackdown Abroad

HONG KONG—After crushing dissent at home, Hong Kong is turning its focus to activists who have continued their resistance to the Beijing-led crackdown from overseas.

Earlier this month, the Hong Kong government offered big rewards for information on eight of its most-wanted dissidents-in-exile. Hong Kong leader John Lee said the fugitives were “street rats” who would be hunted all their lives and were to be avoided at all cost. Days later, family members of a former opposition lawmaker who lives in the U.K. were detained for questioning. 

Authoritarian governments including China often lean on family members to silence their critics overseas, activists say. Hong Kong has moved aggressively to quell dissent in the city since Beijing imposed a national security law in 2020, but it hadn’t until recently put much public pressure on dissidents who had fled abroad.

While Beijing said the law was needed to restore order following mass protests, Western governments and rights campaigners say the real purpose was to stamp out dissent in the financial hub, once a bastion of civil liberties.

The three-year crackdown has seen pro-democracy politicians, activists and journalists detained, films banned and books culled from public libraries. 

That domestic focus appears to be changing. In a press conference last week set against blown-up photos of the eight fugitives, police announced that arrest warrants had been issued along with the bounties of around $130,000 for information on each of them.

The activists are facing charges including collusion with foreign forces and incitement to secession and subversion for a range of alleged acts, including calling for sanctions against Hong Kong and advocating the city’s independence, police said. The rewards offered for them were more than double those publicly listed for other suspects wanted for murder and rape.

In the days after announcing the rewards, police arrested five men accused of raising money to support overseas activists suspected of endangering national security.

The pressure on dissidents abroad is sending a chill through the tens of thousands of Hong Kongers now living in open societies and who would like to speak out on behalf of people still in the city, said Ted Hui, one of the eight activists. 

“Now we know that any one of them can be in danger and can face terrible repercussions for speaking out,” Hui, a lawyer who now lives in Australia, wrote in an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page dated Sunday. “Using social media to advocate freedom and democracy in Hong Kong can be seen as seditious. Meeting politicians and attending government hearings can be regarded as colluding with foreign forces.” 

He urged Western countries to impose sanctions on Hong Kong and Beijing officials. Efforts to get Hong Kong sanctioned violate the national security law’s prohibition on collusion with foreign forces, one of four offenses punishable by up to life in prison. Authorities have targeted overseas activists who have advocated sanctions. 

In a letter to the Journal’s editorial page, Hong Kong Security Secretary Chris Tang defended the bounties and said endangering national security is a dangerous offense. “No country will watch with folded arms acts and activities that endanger national security,” he wrote. 

Nathan Law, the former opposition lawmaker now living in the U.K., isn’t the first overseas activist to see family come under pressure. Chung Ching Kwong, the 27-year-old former spokesperson for Hong Kong internet rights group Keyboard Frontline, said Hong Kong police twice summoned members of her family for questioning, most recently in September. They told her family that Kwong and other relatives living abroad would be arrested if they returned to the city, she said. 

“We’re being put into a very difficult situation,” said Kwong, now in Germany studying for a Ph.D. in law. “It’s not my fault that they are going after my family,” she said. “It’s the government’s fault.”

When asked for comment, a police spokeswoman said that police were unable to locate a record of any case pertaining to Kwong, and that the spokeswoman could neither confirm nor deny that the actions described by Kwong had taken place.

On Tuesday, police said they took two men and a woman for investigation, without providing their names. They said the three were suspected of assisting people accused of national-security violations. 

Local media identified the three as members of Law’s family. Law, who turned 30 this week, has said he cut off contact with family in Hong Kong after fleeing in 2020. “Regarding recent police operations, I can firmly declare that the involved parties have no financial connection with me, and my work is totally unrelated to them,” Law told the Journal. 

The renewed campaign against overseas dissent comes as Hong Kong seeks to show the world it is open for business and remains Asia’s premier financial center following years of political disruption and Covid-induced isolation. 

“It is hard to see how that will be successful while they continue to pursue citizens who came out on the streets to do nothing more than to protest peacefully to protect their rights,” U.K. Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anne-Marie Trevelyan told lawmakers July 6, adding that the government’s response to the crackdown in Hong Kong was to give almost three million Hong Kongers a fast-track route to British citizenship.

“We welcome the contribution that this growing diaspora makes to life in the U.K.,” she said.

Hong Kong posted its third straight year of declining population last year. While economic growth returned to the city in the first quarter, the International Monetary Fund in May projected growth for the city for this year and next that remains below prepandemic levels.

The State Department said the bounties set “a dangerous precedent that threatens the human rights and fundamental freedoms of people all over the world.” 

The new intimidation campaign may backfire on Hong Kong by inducing more Western politicians to punish the city and hardening the resolve of overseas dissidents, said Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute in London.

“It’s a bit of an own goal,” he said. As for dissidents, “some will be intimidated and get more circumspect to avoid ramifications for their loved ones still in Hong Kong. Others will be even more determined to fight back.”  

Another of the eight wanted activists, Kevin Yam, said in a column published Tuesday that the bounty had forced him to leave chat groups containing Hong Kong-based friends and family, “lest I get them into trouble.” He said he also removed anyone working for the Hong Kong government from his social media. 

“Friends have congratulated me for earning a badge of honor in resisting authoritarian tyranny,” he wrote for media in Australia, where he is studying for a master’s degree in law. “If only living normally with a bounty over my head was so straightforward.”

Simon Cheng, a former U.K. consular employee in Hong Kong who alleged he was tortured by Chinese police in 2019 and now lives in Britain, said his family has grown less responsive recently. He said he last spoke with his father last month, and his mother stopped responding to messages last week. 

The lack of contact meant he wasn’t able to know what is behind the silence. 

“I am not sure if that is just a ‘break’ for them, or if anything with pressure happened to them,” he said.

—Newley Purnell contributed to this article.

Write to Dan Strumpf at [email protected]