Hong Kong offers $1m bounty for eight pro-democracy activists who fled into exile

Police offer HK$1m (£100,761) for each individual on list that includes former MPs, saying they are wanted under draconian national security laws

Photos of eight activists for whom arrest warrants have been issued for national security offences are displayed during a press conference in Hong Kong (Reuters)

Hong Kong police have placed bounties on eight pro-democracy activists who fled the city into self-imposed exile, accusing them of serious national security offences including foreign collusion and incitement to secession.

On Monday the police issued wanted notices and offered rewards of HK$1m (£100,761) for each person on the list, stating that their assets would be frozen where possible.

These are the first bounties of this kind to be offered in relation to the city’s sweeping national security law, Superintendent Steve Li said at a press conference.

Those named on the list are activists Nathan Law, Anna Kwok and Finn Lau, former lawmakers Dennis Kwok and Ted Hui, lawyer and legal scholar Kevin Yam, unionist Mung Siu-tat, and online commentator Yuan Gong-yi, the police said.

The activists are in self-imposed exile in the US, Britain and Australia because of the threat to their safety in Hong Kong.

Members of the public have been warned against supporting the activists financially, and told they risk violating the law by doing so.

The police superintendent said the Hong Kong police has extraterritorial jurisdiction and the responsibility to pursue individuals based overseas who have committed acts “endangering the city’s national security”.

The group has “seriously violated the national security offences, called for sanctions against local officials, and schemed for foreign countries to undermine Hong Kong’s financial status,” he said, adding that the eight individuals should come forward and surrender, which may lead to a lighter penalty.

China imposed a new national security law on Hong Kong in June 2020, which carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment for crimes of secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with foreign forces. Critics have accused the government of throttling dissent with the help of the law, which makes it easier to arrest and detain protesters.

Nearly 260 individuals, aged 15 to 90, have been arrested for acts endangering national security in the past three years, Supt Li said, adding that officials have charged two-thirds of those arrested.

Mr Yam, one of the activists named by the police, said he was an “actual Australian citizen exercising my free speech right in Australia” and not an asylum seeker. “It is my duty to continue to speak out against the crackdown that is going on right now, against the tyranny that is now reigning over the city that was once one of the freest in Asia.

“All they want to do is try to make a show of their view that the national security law has extra-territorial effect,” he told reporters. “I miss Hong Kong, but as things stand, no rational person would be going back.”

Mr Yam has been accused of meeting foreign officials to instigate sanctions against Hong Kong officials, judges and prosecutors.

The Hong Kong police claimed the bounty was not a political show but admitted the chances of prosecution are slim if the defendants remain abroad. “If they don’t return, we won’t be able to arrest them, that’s a fact,” Supt Li said.

Britain-based Hong Kong Watch urged the UK, the US and Australia to issue statements “guaranteeing the safety of those activists named and the wider Hong Kong community living overseas”.

“These arrest warrants are not an indictment of these activists, but of Hong Kong’s once well-regarded law enforcement and judiciary,” Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

“Democracies should not only flatly reject the warrants, which authorities want upheld internationally, but they should also increase protections to those threatened by Beijing, consider imposing new sanctions, and face the reality that no mainland or Hong Kong authority will respect international legal obligations.”