Hong Kong activist flees to Britain under pressure from police

A political activist in Hong Kong, previously jailed under the sweeping national security law, said he had fled to Britain and would seek asylum there. This made him the second high-profile dissident this month to announce he was going into exile from the area.

The activist, Tony Chung, revealed on Thursday that he had arrived in Britain, and in several social media posting, said he had decided to leave Hong Kong after oppressive restrictions, pressure to act as an informant and severe stress following his release from prison in June.

Chung, 22, was sentenced to three years and seven months in prison in 2021 after becoming an outspoken supporter of Hong Kong’s independence – an idea that is anathema to the leaders of China’s Communist Party, which rules the territory . He was released early, but police officers continued to keep a close eye on him, he wrote in his account on Instagram. He got their permission to take a short vacation to Okinawa, Japan, and while there he bought a ticket to Britain, he wrote.

“This also means that it will be impossible for me to return to my home, Hong Kong, in the near future,” Mr Chung wrote. “Although I previously expected this day to come, my heart still sank the moment I made a decision. Since I joined social movements from the age of fourteen, I have always believed that Hong Kong is the only home for the nation of Hong Kong, and we should never be the ones to leave it.”

Mr Chung’s departure from Hong Kong was earlier reported by The Washington Post. Hong Kong police did not respond to emailed questions about him on Friday.

Mr Chung joins a growing number of Hong Kong activists and pro-democracy organizers who have left since the territory imposed a national security law in June 2020 in response to massive pro-democracy protests there for much of 2019, which at times culminated in violent clashes between demonstrators and police officers. The law established the judicial and police apparatus to drastically restrict political freedoms in Hong Kong, a British colony until 1997. This colony retained its own system of laws after the handover to China and limited democratic competition for a share of seats in the city’s legislature.

In early December, Agnes Chow, a former pro-democracy student activist in Hong Kong who had served a prison sentence for a number of charges related to her political activities and was still under investigation for others, announced that she had gone to Canada and ignored instructions to file a report. to the Hong Kong police, a condition of her bail. She said that after her release, police took her on an indoctrination tour of mainland China, trying to convince her that Communist Party rule was only for the better.

“I may never go back in my life,” she wrote about Hong Kong.

Mr. Chung described similar efforts by the Hong Kong officers who surveilled him.

Mr Chung became the third person to be convicted under the security law after prosecutors accused him of secession by promoting Hong Kong’s independence, on social media and through a now-disbanded group, Studentlocalism. He was also convicted of money laundering in connection with donations he received in support of the group.

After his release from prison, he tried to regain his economic footing with a temporary job, but police officers ordered him not to take it, without explaining why. Agents offered to pay Mr. Chung to act as an informant, and at meetings they pressed him for details about the places he had been and the people he had met, including his elementary school classmates, he wrote.

The expansion of such informal surveillance of ex-prisoners shows how Hong Kong’s security police have at least partially adopted the methods of mainland Chinese authorities, said Thomas Kellogg, executive director of the Georgetown Center for Asian Law, which has investigated how the Chinese authorities national security legislation has been enforced.

“What we see with Agnes, Tony and others is the importation into Hong Kong of some of these elements of the police state,” Mr. Kellogg said in a telephone interview.

Hong Kong Democracy Council estimates that there are more than 1,700 people in the area have been jailed for protest activities, organized political opposition and related charges, including property damage, under the national security crackdown. How many have been released and how many have left the territory is less clear, experts say.

“You’re seeing a small stream of people who have decided to leave,” Mr. Kellogg said. “There are many different permutations, but the end result in many of these cases is the same: people run for the exit, if they can.”

Hong Kong activists can still face harassment abroad. In July, the territory’s government announced a bounty of HK$1 million, or about $128,000, for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of eight activists who fled abroad.

Such tactics mean that some activists who leave Hong Kong may choose to live under the radar, rather than expose their families back home to interrogations and pressure from police, said Patrick Poona visiting scholar at the University of Tokyo who monitors human rights in Hong Kong.

“But some others think, ‘Well, I don’t have any contact with my family in Hong Kong anymore,’” Mr Poon said. “Some young people in particular defy such threats.”

Mr Chung said he planned to study in Britain and suggested he could remain politically active. “I believe that as long as the people of Hong Kong never give up, the seeds of freedom and democracy will sprout back to life,” he wrote.