In another sign that Hong Kong is back to normal, the NatSec police issue arrest warrants – each with a million-dollar bounty – for eight activists in exile. Most are working for NGOs or in academia. Kevin Yam, Elmer Yuan Gong-yi, Anna Kwok Fung-yee, Dennis Kwok, Ted Hui, Mung Siu-Tat, Finn Lau and Nathan Law are wanted for such crimes as ‘colluding with foreign forces’. Police notices here. Sample from that for Nathan Law…
Between July 2020 and November 2022, LAW Kwun-chung, through various means including attending hearings, meeting foreign politicians, participating in media interviews, issuing open letters, taking part in petitions and publishing posts or videos on social media, advocated separating the HKSAR from the PRC and requested foreign countries to impose “sanctions” or blockade, or engage in other hostile activities against the PRC and the HKSAR.
A report from the press conference…
Chief Superintendent Steven Li urged the 8 wanted persons to “come back to Hong Kong and surrender” in order to earn deduction of sentences.
“We are absolutely not staging any show or spreading fear,” said Chief Superintendent Steven Li. “We are enforcing law.”
What does ‘absolutely not’ really mean here? For many Hongkongers, at least some of the individuals in the mug shots (apparently taken from HKID cards) are instantly recognizable. And since they are all overseas, the big cash rewards are surely unattainable. Not to say, over-generous, it suggests here…
The bounties posted on each of these activists (1,000,000HKD) is: 10x that of a child rapist >3 times that of a murderer >2x that of an arsonist who killed 17 people
Today’s Standard editorial says the NatSec police have ‘gone psychological’. Partly by putting pressure on dissidents abroad who could now in theory be picked up for extradition if they travel through Beijing-friendly countries, but partly in that it ‘reassures patriotic ears’ that the authorities are resolutely and firmly doing something.
As AP points out, the ‘Wanted’ posters have gone up…
…less than two weeks after the state-owned Ta Kung Pao newspaper issued an editorial stating that the National Security Law applies to people outside Hong Kong, and that China, as a member of Interpol, could request assistance from other countries in arresting fugitives.
Filial piety goes NatSec – report.
It’s the alleged requesting of “foreign countries to impose “sanctions” or blockade” that really riles up the so called leaders of HKCCPSAR and gets their panties all bunched up.
Its’s tit for tat.
All the members of the present regime, hanging judges included, are international pariahs and have had to shuffle their bank accounts, children, mistresses, property and mysterious expense/slush/retirement funds faster than a whore takes off her knickers for Donald Trump.
The hope is that the brigand international White conspiracy (to use Vittachi language) will take note and stop being so nasty to them.
We have never had a governor who cannot go anywhere. The present one can go to Shenzhen and Shanghai and Peking but that’s it. If he goes to any international forum, he may be arrested. He is never invited anywhere in any case. How unlike former governors such as Donald for example who slept in the best hotel rooms the world over.
“And yet, though you could not actually hear what the man was saying, you could not be in any doubt about its general nature. He might be denouncing Goldstein and demanding sterner measures against thought-criminals and saboteurs, he might be fulminating against the atrocities of the Eurasian army, he might be praising Big Brother or the heroes on the Malabar front –it made no difference. Whatever it was, you could be certain that every word of it was pure orthodoxy, pure Ingsoc. As he watched the eyeless face with the jaw moving rapidly up and down, Winston had a curious feeling that this was not a real human being but some kind of dummy. It was not the man’s brain that was speaking, it was his larynx. The stuff that was coming out of him consisted of words, but it was not speech in the true sense: it was a noise uttered in unconsciousness, like the quacking of a duck.”
Peking Duck anyone?
Hurrah!
Designed to find new targets for the NS apparatus. Many of the relatives and friends are still in HK. Now anyone with a grudge against them will jump at the snitch bait. Who knows how many people will have their lives and careers dismantled while they are investigated on the ‘evidence’ provided.
Doesn’t this mean that the fighters for democracy cannot come to Hong Kong to renew ID, passports etc?
Also means they can then apply for asylum in democratic countries.
Given the eight so-called ‘fugitives’ went to places with no extradition treaty with Hong Kong (ironically due to the NSL), I wonder if, technically, these bounties don’t make HKSARG complicit in kidnapping and conspiracy and incitement to kidnap through common purpose?
I also wonder how many — after a bit of legal advice — will get their mates to do a citizen’s arrest on them, claim the bounty and then go spend it together when the local legal system does nothing because “that’s not a crime here and we don’t have an extradition treaty”?
I suppose it’s more likely the HKSARG will refuse to pay which will highlight the bounties as a farce and show how toothless the measure is: not exactly a disincentive there.
Ultimately, it’s just a very good thing for the HKSARG, that Hongkongers aren’t a bunch of crafty chancers who run rings around dimwitted authority and hate their government… Oh. Right.
Just for clarification, the Has-no-Standards pegs Eunice Yung as *former* daughter-in-law of Elmer Yuen, merely on her airy declaration of estrangement. But if facts matter, she is still married to the scion of this fickle family, and so remains the old man’s daughter in law.
* Fred Emery voice *
Ooooh, you are naughty! But I like you.
Ham n Eggs
It was DICK Emery, and he said,
“You are AWFUL, but I like you”.