Hong Kong national security law: who are the 8 targeted with HK$1 million bounties? Calls for sanctions, links to 2019 protests among alleged offences
- Ex-legislators Nathan Law, Dennis Kwok, Ted Hui, unionist Mung Siu-tat, lawyer Kevin Yam, activists Finn Lau, Anna Kwok and Elmer Yuan are all currently overseas
- Nearly all have urged sanctions on city, while most linked to 2019 social unrest and online calls for activism before and after leaving, according to police
Evidence shows the eight fugitives with HK$1 million (US$127,600) bounties on their heads continue to threaten national security and seek to “destroy Hong Kong and intimidate officials” by calling for international sanctions, police have said.
Following police’s announcement of the bounties on Monday, the Post takes a closer look at fugitives’ backgrounds, alleged offences and political activities both during their time in Hong Kong and since their departure.
Kevin Yam Kin-fung, 46
Allegedly met overseas officials in November and December last year to instigate sanctions against members of the Hong Kong government and asked foreign countries to impose penalties against local judges and prosecutors in May this year.
Yam and other like-minded Hong Kong legal professionals co-founded the Progressive Lawyers Group in 2015, after the Occupy protests the previous year. It said its aim was to project the voice of local legal practitioners and uphold pro-democracy values.
Yam wrote a column in Ming Pao, a Chinese-language daily, before his contribution was discontinued last August.
The Progressive Lawyers Group disbanded in 2021.
Yam is now a board member of a UK-based group The 29 Principles which, according to its website, is “largely made up of Hongkongers living in quasi-exile” and “supports human rights lawyers working under authoritarian regimes”.
Yam reportedly moved back to Australia last year. He is now living in Melbourne according to his Facebook page, which has 6,947 followers.
He has been a regular contributor to online platforms. In a piece on Green Bean Media last week to mark the third anniversary of the introduction of the security law, he said the quality of Hong Kong’s judiciary had deteriorated since the introduction of the legislation.
In another analytical article for online platform The Freethinker last week, Yam discussed how Western activists could learn from Hongkongers who had set aside their differences to deal with the issue of Chinese state control.
Yam has an active Twitter account with about 11,300 followers.
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Dennis Kwok Wing-hang, 45
Allegedly voiced support in September 2021 for overseas governments to impose sanctions and engage in hostile activities against mainland China and the city. He also allegedly appealed for financial sanctions on the city last December.
Kwok was a founding member of the opposition Civic Party in Hong Kong and was elected as a legal sector lawmaker in 2012. After winning the Legislative Council seat, the Edmonton native gave up his Canadian passport.
He served on Legco until November 2020, when he and three other pan-democrats were stripped of their membership of the legislature for breaching their duty of allegiance or engaging in acts that threatened national security.
In the following days, he announced he would quit Hong Kong politics. He later moved to Canada with his family and planned to regain citizenship. In the following year, he announced he would quit the Civic Party.
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He had been under police investigation into possible misconduct in public office when he presided over Legco house committee meetings back in 2019 and 2020.
Kwok is now a partner at Elliott Kwok Levin & Jaroslaw (New York) and the executive director and co-founder of the think-tank China Strategic Risks Institute, where Yam is also an adviser.
Kwok is also a board member of The 29 Principles.
He has about 87,000 followers on his Facebook page and 5,672 on his Twitter account.
In a recent piece for the SOAS University of London’s China Institute to mark the third anniversary of the national security law, Kwok said the legislation had threatened the city’s status as a financial hub.
Ted Hui Chi-fung, 41
Allegedly initiated the 2021 Hong Kong Charter and advocated independence for the city and Taiwan. Allegedly published posts on social media urging overseas governments to impose sanctions against the mainland and Hong Kong between January 2021 and December 2022.
Hui, former Democratic Party legislator, resigned along with fellow opposition lawmakers in 2020 in protest against Beijing’s move to oust four of their peers.
Hui was on bail awaiting trial for charges related to the 2019 social unrest when he left the city for Denmark with the court’s permission. He ostensibly made the trip to attend climate change meetings, only to announce he had decided to enter self-imposed exile in Britain. He also quit his party.
It later emerged several Danish politicians helped him fake a cover story enabling him to flee Hong Kong.
He is now staying in Adelaide, Australia, according to his social media page.
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Hong Kong’s anti-corruption agency in 2021 issued arrest warrants for Hui over calling on residents on social media to boycott or cast blank votes in protest against a Legco election. The poll was the first citywide one to be held following Beijing’s overhaul of the electoral system to allow only “patriots” to hold political power.
He recently threw his support behind a campaign urging people to report Hong Kong police officers who wanted to apply for emigration or travel visas by asking immigration authorities to disqualify their applications.
He remains active on Twitter and Facebook, with about 13,800 and 107,000 followers respectively, while also maintaining a Patreon account.
He and other activists living overseas launched the “2021 Hong Kong Charter”, urging Hongkongers abroad to continue their campaign against the Hong Kong and Beijing governments. The campaign also called for the “liberation” of the city and the end of China’s one-party rule and asked the international community to “stand together, to safeguard democratic values under the threat of totalitarianism”.
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Elmer Yuan Gong-yi, 74
Allegedly asked foreign countries to impose sanctions against local officials and judicial officers between July 2020 and May 2023. Allegedly launched a referendum to form a “Hong Kong Parliament” to achieve self-determination and subvert state power.
Yuan is the father of Erica Yuen Mi-ming, former chairman of the opposition group People’s Power. He is also father-in-law of pro-establishment legislator Eunice Yung Hoi-yan, of the New People’s Party.
The businessman reportedly became more active in politics from 2019. He was said to have moved to the United States in 2020 and is a self-styled political affairs commentator.
Alongside pro-independence activist and former lawmaker-elect Sixtus Leung Chung-hang and others, he announced plans in August 2022 to form a parliament-in-exile in and hold the first election under universal suffrage in late 2023.
Days later, Yung took out a quarter-page ad in a local newspaper saying she was cutting ties with her father-in-law, who was accused of violating the national security law for subversion.
Yuan posts his views about local politics on Twitter, where he has about 88,300 followers.
Mung Siu-tat, 51
Allegedly smeared the central and local government during an overseas conference last June and advocated separating Hong Kong from China.
Mung was chief executive of the now disbanded Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions for 10 years.
The confederation was co-founded in 1990 by former Labour Party legislator Lee Cheuk-yan, who is now behind bars awaiting trial on a national security charge. The group was also considered a key force in the opposition camp, as well as a major player behind the city’s annual June 4 Tiananmen Square candlelight vigil and also the July 1 march previously held every year.
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Members voted to disband the group in 2021. Before the vote, Mung told the press he had already resigned from the confederation and left the city, citing safety concerns.
He claimed to be living in exile in Britain and is now the executive director of the Hong Kong Labour Rights Monitor, a UK-based concern group.
Nathan Law kwun-chung, 29
Allegedly called on foreign countries to impose sanctions or engage in hostile activities against the country and Hong Kong between July 2020 and November 2022.
Law was a prominent voice for the city’s opposition and a student leader during the 2014 Occupy protests. He later co-founded localist party Demosisto in 2016, where he served as chairman.
Demosisto disbanded on June 30, 2020, as Beijing passed the Hong Kong national security law, with the party leadership resigning from their offices.
At the age of 23, he was elected to Legco, making him the youngest lawmaker in the history of the legislature. Authorities challenged his controversial oath-taking at his first Legco appearance, resulting in his disqualification in July 2017.
He fled the city before the enactment of the national security law in 2020 and was granted political asylum in Britain the following year.
Since leaving Hong Kong, Law has often been invited to meet Western politicians and attend hearings at parliaments to speak about democracy. In 2021, he was also invited to give a brief address at US President Joe Biden’s Summit for Democracy.
He has been accused by authorities of “spreading political lies” about the city and the country.
Law was involved in launching the Hong Kong Charter.
He operates Twitter and Facebook accounts, where he has 332,000 and 215,000 followers respectively. Law also runs a Patreon account for his followers.
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Finn Lau Cho-dik, 29
Allegedly called on foreign countries to impose sanctions against the mainland and the city, while engaging in other hostile activities between July 2020 and June 2021.
Lau is a political activist known for his protesting strategy of laam chau, a Cantonese term referring to a concept of mutual destruction.
He had been only known by the username “I want Laam Chau” on the online forum LIHKG, a Reddit-like platform. He later attracted greater attention and the concept became popular among protesters in 2019.
Lau founded the groups Hong Kong Liberty and Stand with Hong Kong in 2019, recruiting members on social media. The group later launched a series of campaigns to seek the international community’s support for the protest movement.
He left for London in 2020, where he was reportedly working as a surveyor while continuing his activism. In 2021, he claimed he would become a full-time political activist focusing on Hong Kong issues.
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Anna Kwok Fung-yee, 26
Allegedly attended meetings and campaigns overseas and met foreign politicians and officials to request imposing sanctions, while also engaging in hostile activities against the mainland and Hong Kong between September 2021 and February 2022.
Kwok is the executive director of the Hong Kong Democracy Council, a US-based non-profit agency that seeks to expand freedom in China. She claims her mission is to lobby for the city’s future through US politics.
During the 2019 social unrest, she worked as an online organiser for Freedom Hong Kong, a group that crowdfunded protests at the G20 summit and elsewhere.
She reportedly left for the United States in January 2020.
In a congressional hearing in May 2023, she urged the US to offer more humanitarian pathways for Hong Kong people to help “political prisoners”. She also called on the US government to close the three Hong Kong trade offices in the USA, which she claimed facilitated surveillance on Hongkongers.
Additional reporting by Willa Wu
