Joint Assertion from Civil Society Teams on the Hong Kong Authorities’s Concentrating on of Exiled Activists’ Households
We, the undersigned civil society and human rights organizations, strongly condemn the Hong Kong authorities’s escalating repression of activists in exile and their members of the family in Hong Kong.
On Could 2, 2025, Hong Kong nationwide safety police formally charged the daddy of a outstanding US-based activist, Anna Kwok, with a nationwide safety crime, marking the primary such prosecution of a member of the family of an exiled activist.
Kwok Yin-sang, 68, faces one cost of “immediately or not directly” coping with the funds of an “absconder” underneath part 90 of the Safeguarding Nationwide Safety Ordinance, which carries a punishment of as much as seven years in jail. Police additionally arrested Anna Kwok’s brother on April 30 on the identical allegation however have launched him on bail pending additional investigation. We name on the Hong Kong authorities to right away drop all expenses towards Kwok Yin-sang and launch him.
Anna Kwok is the manager director of Hong Kong Democracy Council, a nongovernmental group primarily based in Washington, DC. In July 2023, she was amongst a primary group of eight folks towards whom the Hong Kong police issued arrests warrants and HK$1 million (US$129,000) bounties for violating Hong Kong’s Nationwide Safety Legislation.
Up to now, Hong Kong authorities have issued related baseless arrest warrants and bounties towards 19 exiled Hong Kong activists and have harassed and threatened their households. Most just lately, between January and April, nationwide safety police took away and interrogated over a dozen family and associates of the UK-based activists Carmen Lau and Tony Cheung, and the tutorial Chung Kim-wah, in addition to the US-based activist Frances Hui. In February, the Hong Kong authorities confiscated HK$800,000 (US$103,000) from ex-lawmaker Ted Hui, an Australian resident, and his household for having allegedly violated the Nationwide Safety Legislation.
In June and December 2024, the Hong Kong authorities cancelled the passports of 13 wished activists, together with Anna Kwok.
It appears clear that the police actions towards Anna Kwok’s family are in actual fact geared toward punishing her for her activism. Punishments and harassment towards people for the alleged actions of one other particular person is a type of collective focusing on, prohibited by worldwide human rights regulation.
The Chinese language authorities has used two draconian nationwide safety legal guidelines, the National Security Law of 2020 and the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance of 2024, to dismantle Hong Kong’s democracy motion and take away Hong Kong folks’s basic freedoms. The Chinese language and Hong Kong governments’ actions severely contravened human rights ensures enshrined in Hong Kong’s de facto structure, the Primary Legislation, and violated the Worldwide Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which is included into Hong Kong’s authorized framework through the Primary Legislation and the Invoice of Rights Ordinance.
The 19 wished activists stay in the UK, United States, Canada, and Australia. The US authorities has sanctioned six officers in Hong Kong for utilizing the Nationwide Safety Legislation “extraterritorially to intimidate, silence, and harass” the activists. The other three governments have issued statements condemning the arrest warrants, however haven’t taken motion to carry Hong Kong officers accountable.
In response to the Chinese language authorities’s worldwide intimidation marketing campaign towards the Hong Kong diaspora, we urge involved governments to take concrete actions to carry accountable authorities officers implicated in these abuses.
Governments must also put in place effective measures to guard exiled Hong Kong activists and different critics of the Chinese language authorities towards Beijing’s lengthy arm of repression, together with by establishing nationwide programs to trace circumstances of transnational repression, and impartially examine and prosecute, the place acceptable, these accountable who’re inside their jurisdictions.
Signatories
- Amnesty Worldwide
- ARTICLE 19
- China Assist Affiliation
- Chinese language Human Rights Defenders
- CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation
- Fortify Rights
- Freedom Home
- Georgetown Heart for Asian Legislation
- Hong Kong Watch
- The Human Rights Basis
- Human Rights Watch
- Worldwide Service for Human Rights
- Judicial Reform Basis
- PEN America
- The Rights Apply
- Safeguard Defenders
- College students for a Free Tibet, Japan
- Taipei Bar Affiliation Human Rights Committee
- Taiwan Bar Affiliation Human Rights Committee
- Uyghur Human Rights Mission
- Victims of Communism Memorial Basis
- World Organisation Towards Torture (OMCT)
- World Uyghur Congress
