Hong Kong cops put bounty on two high-profile Australian residents

Hong Kong police have put a $HK1m ($191,800) bounty on Melbourne-based Australian lawyer Kevin Yam and Ted Hui, a former HK politician who now lives in Adelaide.

Ted Hui, left, and Kevin Yam with Foreign Minister Penny Wong in January at the Australian government offices in Adelaide. On Monday, the Hong Kong police announced the two have been accused of ‘collusion’.

Hong Kong police have put a $HK1m ($191,800) bounty on Melbourne-based Australian lawyer Kevin Yam and Ted Hui, a former Hong Kong politician who now lives in Adelaide, in an unprecedented application of the Beijing-authored National Security Law.

Announcing the bounties late on Monday, Chief Superintendent Steven Li said Hong Kong’s police force “won’t stop chasing them”, setting up a confrontation with an Australian government already straining to maintain the recent “stabilisation” of relations with China.

“We are absolutely not staging any show or spreading fear. We are enforcing law,” said Superintendent Li at a press conference in Hong Kong.

The Hong Kong police force announced that eight people, ­including the Australian pair, were being accused of breaking the sweeping security law. The accused span democracy activists, former MPs and civic leaders, who live variously in Canada, the US, Britain and Australia.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong, who met Mr Hui and Mr Yam in her government offices in Adelaide in January, said the Australian government was “deeply disappointed” by the news of the arrest warrants.

“We have consistently expressed concerns about the broad application of the National Security Law to arrest or pressure pro-democracy figures and civil society,” Senator Wong told The Australian late on Monday.

“The [Albanese] government will continue to speak out on issues that matter to Australians, including human rights.

“Freedom of expression and assembly are essential to our democracy, and we will support those in Australia who exercise those rights.

“Australia remains deeply concerned by the continuing erosion of Hong Kong’s rights, freedoms and autonomy,” she said.

Last November, Mr Hui and Mr Yam went to Canberra to meet with Australian federal politicians to discuss pressing issues for the Hong Kong Australian diaspora.

Speaking from Adelaide, Mr Hui told The Australian the charges and bounty were “ridiculous and hilarious”, and showed how “powerless” China’s ruling party is.

“It doesn’t affect my personal safety at all. I already have a number of arrest warrants against me under the National Security Law and (other laws),” said Mr Hui, a former Hong Kong pro-democracy MP who sought political asylum in Australia in 2021 and is applying for permanent residency.

“The CCP regime has no way of persuading Western democracies to extradite me. For example, in Australia the extradition treaty has been suspended. So I feel very safe here,” he said, using the initials of the Chinese Communist Party.

“It’s making it very apparent to the world that China is progressing towards more extreme authoritarianism.”

Mr Yam is an Australian citizen, and cricket tragic, who was raised in Melbourne before working as a commercial lawyer in Hong Kong for two decades. He said the Hong Kong ­government was trying to underscore the “extraterritorial” threat of the security law.

Speaking to The Australian less than an hour after he was a­ccused of “collusion”, Mr Yam said his phone had been running “non-stop” with congratulations messages.

“It says a lot about how far Hong Kong has fallen that ­people think that having a ­national security arrest warrant is a badge of honour,” said Mr Yam, who returned to Melbourne in 2022 and is now a ­senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Centre for Asian Law.

“I derive no joy from all the congratulations. I just feel sad for Hong Kong,” he said.

Three years after the imposition of the National Security Law, Australia remains deeply concerned by the erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy.

We urge the Chinese government to uphold the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Basic Law and Sino-British Joint Declaration.

— Senator Penny Wong (@SenatorWong) June 30, 2023

The controversial law bans acts of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with ­foreign forces, and was imposed under instructions from Beijing after months of protests in 2019.

Senator Wong last week ­repeated Australia’s deep concerns about its application in a city with the second-biggest group of overseas Australians.

The other six suspects announced on Monday are former MPs Nathan Law Kwun-chung and Dennis Kwok Wing-hang, unionist Mung Siu-tat, and activists Finn Lau Cho-dik, Anna Kwok Fung-yee and Elmer Yuan Gong-yi.

During a speech on the 26th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to Chinese rule on July 1, Hong Kong chief executive John Lee Ka-chiu warned the city should remain on guard against “soft resistance” that posed a threat to national security.

Hong Kong’s police force said it has arrested 260 people, aged from 15 to 90, since the law took effect.