Hong Kong’s Safety Bureau pronounces measures over activists’ alleged position in unofficial parliament abroad.
Hong Kong authorities have cancelled the passports of 12 activists primarily based abroad of their newest crackdown on actions that they declare pose threats to nationwide safety.
Hong Kong’s Safety Bureau introduced the measures on Monday after a neighborhood court docket issued arrest warrants final month for the 12 activists and 7 different pro-democracy campaigners over their alleged roles in establishing an unofficial parliament abroad.
The bureau mentioned it had additionally banned people from offering monetary help or leasing property to 16 of the “absconders,” and getting into into joint ventures or partnerships with them.
The wished activists embrace Chongyi Feng, an Australian citizen and professor on the College of Know-how Sydney, and Sasha Gong, a United States citizen and journalist who beforehand labored for Voice of America.
Hong Kong authorities allege that the 19 activists’ participation within the “Hong Kong Parliament” advocacy group constitutes subversion below the Chinese language-ruled metropolis’s sweeping nationwide safety regulation.
A Hong Kong authorities spokesperson mentioned the activists had continued to “blatantly have interaction in actions that endanger nationwide safety” whereas hiding in international locations together with america, the UK, Canada, and Australia.
The Hong Kong parliament condemned final month’s announcement of arrest warrants and bounties for the campaigners as a “blatant abuse of authorized devices to pursue political persecution”.
“These actions signify a transparent escalation of Beijing’s transnational repression, extending its coercive attain past China’s borders and infringing upon the sovereignty of democratic nations, together with the UK, america, Canada, Australia, and members of the European Union,” the group mentioned.
As soon as identified for its spirited political opposition and media, Hong Kong has radically curtailed the house for dissent because the introduction of a sweeping Beijing-decreed nationwide safety regulation in 2020 in response to violent anti-government protests.
Opposition events have been successfully eradicated from the town’s legislature, and public commemorations of delicate occasions, such because the 1989 Tiananmen Sq. bloodbath, primarily outlawed.
Hong Kong Chief Government John Lee mentioned final month that 332 people had been arrested for nationwide offences since 2020.
Mainland Chinese language and Hong Kong officers have defended the regulation, and extra nationwide safety laws launched in 2024, as crucial to revive stability to the town after the turmoil attributable to the mass protests.