Hong Kong cancels passports, bans financial support for wanted activists

Hong Kong’s Security Bureau announces measures implicit activists’ alleged relation successful unofficial parliament overseas.

Hong Kong authorities person cancelled the passports of 12 activists based overseas successful their latest crackdown connected activities that they assertion airs threats to nationalist security.

Hong Kong’s Security Bureau announced the measures connected Monday aft a section tribunal issued apprehension warrants past period for the 12 activists and 7 different pro-democracy campaigners implicit their alleged roles successful establishing an unofficial parliament overseas.

The bureau said it had besides banned individuals from providing fiscal enactment oregon leasing spot to 16 of the “absconders,” and entering into associated ventures oregon partnerships with them.

The wanted activists see Chongyi Feng, an Australian national and prof astatine the University of Technology Sydney, and Sasha Gong, a United States national and writer who antecedently worked for Voice of America.

Hong Kong authorities allege that the 19 activists’ information successful the “Hong Kong Parliament” advocacy radical constitutes subversion nether the Chinese-ruled city’s sweeping nationalist information law.

A Hong Kong authorities spokesperson said the activists had continued to “blatantly prosecute successful activities that endanger nationalist security” portion hiding successful countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia.

The Hong Kong parliament condemned past month’s announcement of apprehension warrants and bounties for the campaigners arsenic a “blatant maltreatment of ineligible instruments to prosecute governmental persecution”.

“These actions correspond a wide escalation of Beijing’s transnational repression, extending its coercive scope beyond China’s borders and infringing upon the sovereignty of antiauthoritarian nations, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, and members of the European Union,” the radical said.

Once known for its spirited governmental absorption and media, Hong Kong has radically curtailed the abstraction for dissent since the instauration of a sweeping Beijing-decreed nationalist information instrumentality successful 2020 successful effect to convulsive anti-government protests.

Opposition parties person been efficaciously eliminated from the city’s legislature, and nationalist commemorations of delicate events, specified arsenic the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, fundamentally outlawed.

Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee said past period that 332 individuals had been arrested for nationalist offences since 2020.

Mainland Chinese and Hong Kong officials person defended the law, and further nationalist information authorities introduced successful 2024, arsenic indispensable to reconstruct stableness to the metropolis aft the turmoil caused by the wide protests.