The 68-year-old father of ‘absconder’ Anna Kwok is denied bail on national security grounds. He was arrested last week for attempting to obtain funds form an insurance policy of his daughter’s…
[Chief Magistrate Victor] So said on Thursday that after hearing arguments from the prosecution and the defence and reviewing all documents, there were insufficient grounds to believe that Kwok Yin-sang would not continue to engage in activities endangering national security if he was granted bail.
Links to two statements from NGOs here. The (paywalled) Economist says…
The move marks a serious escalation by the Hong Kong authorities, under pressure from Beijing, to enforce complete political control over the territory. Last year they jailed a group of 45 prominent activists who stayed in the city, for between four and ten years. But this is the first time a family member of an exiled activist has been prosecuted. In 2023 the Hong Kong government placed a bounty on several campaigners abroad, including Ms Kwok, who now leads the Hong Kong Democracy Council in Washington, accusing them of colluding with foreign forces. That can carry a sentence of life in prison. There are now 19 “wanted” activists living in exile, who have a bounty on their head. The authorities have revoked the passports of Ms Kwok and 12 others.
Their family members have faced increasing harassment. Since January police have interrogated the families of at least five of the exiled activists, says Human Rights Watch (hrw), an ngo in New York. They raided the office of the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute, an institution associated with Chung Kim-wah, a scholar now based in Britain, and confiscated HK$800,000 ($103,000) from the family of Ted Hui, a former lawmaker who lives in Australia, both for allegedly contravening national security.
And a cousin and cousin’s wife of activist Joe Tay – also overseas with a HK$1 million reward on him – are taken in for questioning…
Tay ran in the Canadian legislative elections last month as a member of the country’s Conservative Party. He emerged second in his district out of six candidates.
Victor So is busy these days. He sends a man to prison for a year for ‘knowingly publishing publications that had a seditious intention’ on Facebook posts…
Li was said to have shared news articles and photos on his Facebook account along with his commentary. His posts could be viewed publicly, but received very few responses, the court heard.
The former Citybus employee attacked the police in most of his posts, saying that the force had made “arbitrary arrests” and “used violence” to crack down on protesters during the 2019 anti-extradition bill unrest.
The defendant called the police “black cops” and said the Independent Police Complaints Council, which cleared the police force of any misconduct during the 2019 protests, had “condoned” what he described as “police brutality.”
Li criticised court rulings in protest-related cases, calling some judges “stupid” and accusing them of “framing” defendants on rioting charges. He said Hong Kong’s judicial system was “fucking broken,” adding that the city’s rule of law was “dead.”
Some questions… How many Hong Kong people agree with any/most/all of Li’s comments? Would he be in the clear if he had prefaced each post with the phrase ‘in my opinion’? Does it make a difference if a defendant challenges the prosecution to provide evidence of the (little-read) posts successfully inciting any hatred? Or is it a crime to utter such thoughts even in private where no-one hears or reads them?
If this doesn’t reduce the influx of Mainland tourists, nothing will: foreigners peering out of the deathly gloom of Central in the early hours.
Spending the coming week in Japan’s most boring city.
Nagoya is my favourite Japanese city. It’s so authentic, not overcrowded with tourists, people seem happier and relaxed. Don’t understand all the hate for it.
So let me get this straight: these tourists are in a McDonald’s in Central, but walk through LKF on the way to catch their ferry. Aren’t they walking in the wrong direction, or simply embellishing their story and the Standard is too dumb to notice?
Re: Mainland tourists blown out of their minds that people might look at them strangely at 3am, especially a bunch of leering, drunk Gweilos in LKF…
“They stressed that while they emerged physically unharmed, the psychological impact of their experience was profound and lingering.”
Knowing mainland women with their propensity to over dramatize the smallest out-of-the-ordinary event (usually in order to demand some kind of undeserved compensation) I’m not surprised by the blowing up of what are just daily occurrences for the rest of the world.
Perhaps if they were in a more litigious place they could hire a lawyer to sue those that caused them the profound and lingering psychological trauma?
Nagoya: If you can stay somewhere FAR off the desired social media track and still be a very short train ride to, say, the EXPO in Osaka this year then it’s definitely a win-win. Problem is, I see Nagoya soon becoming a haven for those that want to “experience Japan” but keep a base outside of pricier cities (Osaka, Kyoto, even Tokyo). Nagoya’s harmless blandness will soon become it’s worst enemy!
“Or is it a crime to utter such thoughts even in private where no-one hears or reads them?”
It is now a crime merely to have such thoughts, comrade.
And yet the so-called human rights activists persist in opposing the obvious reciprocal action of applying sanctions to all of the immediate family members of targeted individuals. It is the epitome of ineffectual virtue-signalling.
“Would he be in the clear if he had prefaced each post with the phrase ‘in my opinion’?”
“All criticism are intended to raise questions and suggestions for improvement”
Raymond Siu believed it was time to draw a line under the protests but new Commissioner Joe is a hardliner. In my opinion, the recent family member crackdown is no coincidence.
In my opinion, he is being groomed for the top job after a second term for Tang who will then be shuffled to the official graveyard, the back benches of the NPC.
citizen action
feel better to the point of smug
LKF
MaaDonnaaa
mainland tourists
not-getting laid
post-midnight “peering duties”
problem
shadowy side-streets
wheelie-bag