Anna Kwok’s father imprisoned for cancelling an insurance policy he took out for her when she was an infant…
His daughter lives in the US and has been wanted by national security police for suspected foreign collusion since 2023.
Handing down the jail term, Acting Principal Magistrate Andy Cheng said the offence – under the city’s homegrown security law – was serious and that Kwok had showed no remorse.
He acknowledged that Kwok did not do anything that directly endangered national security, and that the funds – if successfully withdrawn – would only be used by the defendant.
So how was it serious?
As Brian Kern points out, the prison sentence will cause anguish not only for 69-year-old Kwok Yin-sang himself, but to his daughter…
In fact, at least 51 relatives in Hong Kong are known to have been detained for interrogation in relation to the arrest warrants and bounties. They were brought into police stations and interrogated usually for several hours before being released. But taking the next step and imprisoning one of them represents a significant escalation.
…Now the regime was threatening to make their loved ones pay for their “transgressions.” And a form of hostage-taking commenced. But the problem was, if all it was doing was taking their family members in for questioning, overseas Hong Kongers would get used to that and not be terribly frightened. So it had to go a step farther. Thus, Anna’s father’s case.
…First of all it’s because family members are not doing anything that the regime can frame as crimes. And secondly, to show just how arbitrary the regime can be: it’s saying, we can get your relatives for anything at any time, so you had better be quiet or your loved one will pay.
From CNN…
“There is no such thing as … collective punishment, and it has absolutely nothing to do with whether the defendant and the fugitive are family,” [Magistrate] Cheng said.
Anna Kwok talks about the verdict on a YouTube vid.
Story also being covered by Reuters, BBC, NYT, etc, etc.
One of the aims of US-based exiled activists like Anna Kwok is the barring of Hong Kong’s Economics and Trade Offices. An op-ed in The Diplomat explains…
…the HKETOs in Washington, D.C., New York, and San Francisco are engaging in activities that strengthen the Chinese government’s influence in the United States. They promote Beijing’s narratives and propaganda, counter-lobby against human rights legislation, and court federal, state, and local officials as well as business leaders and others. Don’t be fooled; the HKETOs are not neutral trade bureaucracies. They have a benign-sounding label that obscures their political function, allowing them to gain unique access and influence with U.S. corporations and in our states and cities.
From Niao Collective, a collection of threads on Hong Kong protest art. And New Lines magazine on the emergence of Japanese anime in protest-related memes worldwide.
Why should I have to read all these words? I am very busy with my important crypto investmints! Durp cunt and fuck vag.
“ Handing down the jail term, Acting Principal Magistrate Andy Cheng said the offence – under the city’s homegrown security law – was serious and that Kwok had showed no remorse.”
Why should he have remorse for an insurance policy he paid for and took out when his daughter was an infant? He did what any loving father would do.
These Kafkaesque statements are really unbelievable.
And indeed the only serious offence here is the collective punishment being done, not the taking out of an insurance policy decades before article 23 was implemented!
All it proves is every protester in the article 23 protests in 2003 was right to distrust the government and fear the proposed at the time law.
“Anna Kwok’s father imprisoned for cancelling an insurance policy he took out for her when she was an infant…”
THAT’LL teach the ungrateful HK People to toy around with such important matters as national security while not showing remorse!!
“Why should I have to read all these words? I am very busy with my important crypto investmints! Durp cunt and fuck vag.”
I love to read all the words that Hemlock writes. I wouldn’t be here otherwise. Whenever Hemlock goes on vacation I feel like something is missing in my life that day.
Disgusting!
How did the government know the insurance policy existed, and what was being done with it? I haven’t seen these questions being addressed anywhere. It seems to me that this is private information that the government should have no knowledge of it.
A poem for the weekend, though I’m afraid it may seem frivolous compared with the main subject of today’s post.
– – – – – –
Like a Nature Poet
Walking through a park. Like a nature poet
I raised my eyes, gazing at the trees.
Never mind the path, the wall.
I tripped, hurt my knees.
Never mind. Careless. Accidents will happen.
Again a few days later, walking there.
Gazing now at – no – the path –
Slowly now, with care.
I saw some trees and, like a poet, thought: They’re symbols.
Still February, though days are warmer now.
The trees were bare, stripped, leafless,
Naked, every bough.
Not tall, these trees. Their boughs were delicate and slender.
A sunny February day, though cool,
Perhaps the end of winter gloom.
And on the trees, in bloom,
At the tip of many boughs, glorious yellow
Flowers were blossoming. A symbol of –
Of what? A denizen of the city,
I dully thought: How pretty.
And yet I lingered there, gazing at the trees.
I walked a little further, then returned.
Walked on, returned, I think, twice,
And dully thought: How nice.
– – – – – – –
the tree was
Tabebuia chrysanthama – yellow pui
Thanks to the Leisure and Cultural Services Department.
If concern for your child is now a crime, is it any wonder that the birth rate has fallen to such low levels?
Meanwhile, oops! Jimmy Lai’s outrageous 5+ year sentence for a pretend lease infringement WAS a mistake after all*. How careless of the government and oh-so-independent judicial system! Conveniently revealed just after they hit him with 20 years for some other imaginary slight to the national ego.
https://hongkongfp.com/2026/02/26/breaking-hong-kong-court-quashes-jimmy-lais-fraud-conviction-over-apple-daily-hq-lease-violation/
(* pending possible further vengeance)
The occupants of the White House or 10 Downing Street get truckloads of innuendo, abuse and investigations dumped upon them daily, and street protests are a constant feature.
Here, the HK regime’s hold on power is so tenuous that it feels compelled to lock up an elderly, law-abiding father who quietly cashes in an old, perfectly legal insurance policy as the insurance company (AIA) rats him out.
God, I miss the British.
@A Poor Man: No doubt businesses in HK are self reporting what they know in order to appear patriotically compliant and doing their duty. You know, like the Cultural Revolution days up north. Plus, once an account/policy is deemed “illegal” it’s likely they get to KEEP it all, pending an expensive and time consuming legal process (should the account holder even be able to afford it).
Did AIA rat on the father? That would deter folk from buying policies, expecially the lucrative money laundering investments made by mainland visitors.
More likely the lead came through surveillance of the father’s internet / phone / mail box. There are unknown numbers of NS agents active in the community, remember the six hotels designated ‘prohibited places’ last year. For sure each and every person with any relationship to those involved in ‘anti-patriotic’ activities is monitored.