(Taipei) – The Hong Kong police arrested the father of a prominent US-based activist, Anna Kwok, on April 30, 2025, and charged him with a national security crime, Human Rights Watch said today. The arrest of Kwok Yin-sang was the first such prosecution of a family member of an exiled activist. Hong Kong authorities should immediately drop all charges and release him.
The Hong Kong authorities have recently intensified their harassment of the families of 19 wanted Hong Kong activists living in exile. Punishments and harassment against individuals for the alleged actions of another person is a form of collective punishment, prohibited by international human rights law.
“The Chinese government has increased its appalling use of collective punishment against family members of peaceful activists from Hong Kong,” said Yalkun Uluyol, China researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The Hong Kong authorities should immediately and unconditionally release Anna Kwok’s father and cease harassing families of Hong Kong activists.”
On May 2, national security police formally charged Kwok Yin-sang, 68, with “directly or indirectly” dealing with the finances of an “absconder” under section 90 of the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, which carries a punishment of up to seven years in prison. Kwok Yin-sang remains in custody with a bail hearing scheduled for May 8. Anna Kwok’s brother was also arrested on April 30 but has been released on bail pending further investigation.
Anna Kwok, 28, is the executive director of Hong Kong Democracy Council, a nongovernmental organization based in Washington, DC. In July 2023, she was among a first group of eight people against whom the Hong Kong police issued arrests warrants and HK$1 million (US$129,000) bounties for violating Hong Kong’s National Security Law.
Since then, Hong Kong police have issued similar baseless arrest warrants and bounties against 11 other exiled Hong Kong activists.
Hong Kong authorities have sought to intimidate dozens of family members of the 19 “wanted” individuals, primarily by interrogating them. In the case of Ted Hui, a resident of Australia, they also confiscated HK$800,000 (US$103,000) from him and his family for having allegedly violated the National Security Law.
There has been a new wave of harassment against these families in recent months, Human Rights Watch said. After the Hong Kong police issued the third group of arrests and bounties against six exiled activists in December 2024, they began to harass their families. In January, police interrogated eight family members and former colleagues of the UK-based scholar Chung Kim-wah, and raided the office of the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute, with which Chung was formerly associated.
In February the police questioned the aunts and an uncle of Carmen Lau, a UK-based activist and former district councilor. On March 18, police interrogated the stepfather of the activist Tony Chung, who is in the UK.
On April 10, national security police took the parents of the US-based activist Frances Hui into custody for questioning.
The 19 wanted activists have also faced various other forms of harassment. In June and December 2024, the Hong Kong government cancelled the passports of 13 wanted activists, including Anna Kwok. In March, Lau and Chung reported that anonymous individuals sent letters to residents in various London neighborhoods urging them to hand in the activists to the Chinese Embassy in London, citing the warrants and bounties against them. Similar letters were sent to Melbourne-based Kevin Yam, a democracy activist and an Australian citizen.
Many of the 19 activists, including Kwok and Frances Hui, have reported online harassment campaigns, including rape and death threats, since the government issued the warrants and bounties against them. The media reported that an online campaign, which exhibited signs of a previous Chinese government influence operation, sought to mobilize far-right people in the UK to attack activists on the bounty list.
The 19 wanted activists live in the UK, US, Canada, and Australia. The US government in March sanctioned six officials in Hong Kong for using the National Security Law “extraterritorially to intimidate, silence, and harass” the activists. The other three governments have issued statements condemning the arrest warrants, but have not taken action to hold Hong Kong officials accountable. The US government is also the only one that has arrested someone for allegedly harassing a Hong Kong activist on its soil, though the person was later acquitted.
The Chinese government has used two draconian national security laws, the National Security Law of 2020 and the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance of 2024, to dismantle the city’s pro-democracy movement and take away its fundamental freedoms, which are enshrined in Hong Kong’s de facto constitution, the Basic Law. Over 200,000 Hong Kongers have left Hong Kong, among them protesters and activists who have continued their activism abroad.
The Australian, UK, and US governments, the European Union, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights have all publicly expressed concerns about the two security laws.
Foreign governments should take concrete actions against the Chinese government’s international intimidation campaign against Hong Kong activists, including by imposing targeted sanctions on government officials implicated in these abuses. They should also put in place effective measures to protect exiled Hong Kong activists and other critics of the Chinese government against Beijing’s long arm of repression.
“Beijing isn’t likely to stop abuses against the families of exiled activists unless affected governments send a strong message that such repression carries a cost,” Uluyol said. “They should fully investigate and sanction Chinese and Hong Kong officials involved, and pass strong laws to protect their residents and citizens from transnational abuses.”
