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Kwok Yin-sang, 68, father of Anna Kwok Fung Yee, an exiled activist wanted by Hong Kong police with a HKD 1 million bounty, was arrested on April 30, denied bail, and charged with “attempting to deal with, directly or indirectly, any funds or other financial assets or economic resources belonging to, or owned or controlled by, a relevant absconder,” under Article 23, the city's domestic security law. The maximum penalty for the offence is seven years’ imprisonment.
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Since Hong Kong national security police announced arrest warrants for exiled activists beginning in July 2023, relatives of these wanted individuals have become subjects of police interrogations in the name of investigations. Overseas human rights organisations condemned the move and accused Hong Kong officials of turning the activists’ loved ones back home into hostages so as to silence them. They added that the strategy is directly from China’s transnational repression playbook.
Currently, there are 19 wanted persons involved in national security cases, each with a HKD 1 million bounty. Since the passage of Article 23 in March 2024, the Secretary of Security, Chris Tang, has denounced 13 of the wanted activists as “absconders.” The legal label will prohibit any individual from having financial exchanges and dealings with them. Anna Kwok, the executive director of the Hong Kong Democracy Council, is one of the “absconders.”
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