Now the regime's kidnapping our families: The imprisonment of Anna Kwok's father in Hong Kong
...just sentenced to eight months for trying to cancel an insurance policy
Understandably, in these days, to the extent that Hong Kong gets any international media attention at all, it’s been drawn to the sentencing of Jimmy Lai to an incredible 20 years in prison for owning a pro-democracy newspaper (which the regime forcibly closed). While a travesty, and highly significant, being the heaviest sentence yet imposed upon a political prisoner in Hong Kong, arguably it is less precedent-setting than the regime’s conviction and sentencing of the father of Anna Kwok. After all, we’ve known for years Jimmy would get it: his paper was shut down, he’s been in prison for years, he’s been defamed and demonized by the regime as the “black hand” behind the pro-democracy movement (actually that defames the movement more than the man), so the only question was how long his sentence would be.
But Anna’s father is the first family member of an overseas Hong Konger wanted by the regime to be convicted and sentenced to prison. This represents a major escalation in the regime’s campaign of transnational repression. Why did the regime take this unprecedented step? Why did it choose Anna and her family (her brother was arrested together with her father but has not been charged) to target? What effect does it hope to have? How successful has it been in achieving that goal? And how significant is its timing?
First of all, the case: Mr Kwok’s “crime” was to try to cancel a life insurance policy he took out for Anna when she was two years old. The official name of this crime “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.” The prosecution’s argument was that Anna owned the life insurance policy that Mr Kwok was “attempting to deal with,” even though it was Mr Kwok who had taken out the policy those many years ago and was the only person who had ever administered it. For the prosecution it was an easy open-and-shut case, and the judge, who is designated by the Chief Executive to be among those judges who are allowed to hear “national security” cases, bought it. The prosecution did not even argue that Mr Kwok was attempting to secure funds to aid his “absconding” daughter or even that he had any contact with her.
This only became a “crime” in 2024 when the Hong Kong government promulgated the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance. This is the second major “national security” legislation imposed on Hong Kong after the 2020 national security law directly imposed by the Chinese Communist Party. The 2024 law is often referred to in Hong Kong as “Article 23 legislation” because it is intended to fulfill the Hong Kong government’s obligation under Article 23 of the Basic Law to pass national security legislation. This had always been a contention matter in Hong Kong since the 1997 handover, with the pro-democracy movement arguing that universal suffrage also had to be implemented in order to ensure that any “national security” legislation would not infringe upon Hong Kongers’ political and civil liberties. 500,000 Hong Kongers marched against the first attempt to impose Article 23 legislation in 2003 and it was shelved, all the way to 2024, when, after all pro-democracy leaders had been kicked out of elected office and most had been imprisoned and all protests had been ended, the regime could impose it without any opposition. The regime used the legislation to essentially close loopholes seen to exist after the 2020 CCP-imposed NSL.
So the second way in which the imprisonment of Anna’s father is precedent-setting is its the first time the new 2024 statute was used to prosecute anyone. And Anna’s father’s prosecution is only the second time a crime in the “national security” legal framework has been prosecuted which is not a “core” crime, the core crimes being terrorism, secession, subversion and collusion with external forces—all from the 2020 CCP-imposed law—and sedition, formally incorporated into the “national security” legal framework in the 2024 law. The first time was when Chow Hang-tung and four other members of the Hong Kong Alliance standing committee were convicted of refusing to hand over information about the Alliance to police upon demand. Those who plead guilty were sentenced to three months in prison, those who plead not guilty were sentenced to four and a half months. Eventually, these convictions and sentences were overturned on appeal to the highest court in Hong Kong, the Court of Final Appeal, but only after all five had served their sentences.
Of course, Anna’s father is not the first family member of the 34 overseas Hong Kongers so far targeted with arrest warrants and bounties under the 2020 national security law. In fact, at least 51 relatives in Hong Kong are known to have been detained for interrogation in relation to the arrest warrants and bounties. They were brought into police stations and interrogated usually for several hours before being released. But taking the next step and imprisoning one of them represents a significant escalation.
To understand why the regime has done this, we first have to take a step back. Beginning with the 2019-2020 protests and continuing during the subsequent and ongoing crackdown, Hong Kongers in the diaspora have been very active in the freedom struggle. Having successfully cracked down on the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong through arrests, imprisonments, the decimation of independent civil society, the barring of all those with pro-democracy sympathies from political participation and the banning of all protests, the regime saw it still had a problem on its hands: how to control the Hong Kongers overseas who were still demanding freedom in Hong Kong? The CCP has had decades to develop methods to influence, control and infiltrate the Chinese and Tibetan diaspora in particular, but it had never made significant inroads with the Hong Kong diaspora, which was to a significant extent until at least the Umbrella Movement of 2014 relatively apolitical. So the regime had few tools and mechanisms readily at its disposal to control overseas Hong Kongers. Thus, the arrest warrants and bounties, followed by the targeting of the families.
The arrest warrants and bounties alone would arguably not have been very effective because overseas Hong Kongers felt safe in their countries of residence and as long as they had no plans to return to Hong Kong, there was no way the regime could get at them. It had to show it was holding their families hostage. Up to now, those involved in the pro-democracy movement knew they could and most likely would be targeted by the regime, but they were fairly confident their loved ones would be left alone. No longer. Now the regime was threatening to make their loved ones pay for their “transgressions.” And a form of hostage-taking commenced. But the problem was, if all it was doing was taking their family members in for questioning, overseas Hong Kongers would get used to that and not be terribly frightened. So it had to go a step farther. Thus, Anna’s father’s case.
The peculiar thing, though, the thing I kept asking myself, was, why settle on such a trifling matter as the precedent? Why not find some much graver crime? Canceling a life insurance policy? Come on! First of all it’s because family members are not doing anything that the regime can frame as crimes. And secondly, to show just how arbitrary the regime can be: it’s saying, we can get your relatives for anything at any time, so you had better be quiet or your loved one will pay. It’s also no surprise they chose Anna to target: she has lead one of the most effective and prominent diaspora Hong Kong advocacy organizations, Hong Kong Democracy Council, she has been quite prominent in international media, and she works in Washington, DC, the US capital, and the regime has always been especially sensitive about the US government, since it’s one of the few with the power to influence the CCP. It’s no coincidence that the trial of Jimmy Lai was centered around his contacts with US officials and politicians. Plus, ever since Anna was initially targeted with an arrest warrant and bounty along with the first batch of eight overseas Hong Kongers on July 3, 2023, she did not stop speaking up. In other words, the move by the regime had no influence on her. So, time to tighten the screws and make her an example to others.
The arrest warrants and bounties, the detentions of family members in Hong Kong for interrogation, and now the imprisonment of Anna’s father are the tip of the spear of the regime’s campaign of transnational repression against Hong Kongers who continue to stand up for Hong Kong’s freedom abroad. The regime found it had so little control over the Hong Kong diaspora, and so it decided on a kind of quick fix, to try to remote control it from Hong Kong, by using their family members.
So, has it been successful? And is the timing significant—why did it do so now?
Yes, unfortunately, it has been successful. Partially, at least. Since it began issuing the arrest warrants and bounties in mid-2023, much diaspora grassroots activism has collapsed, in the US in particular, perhaps less so in the UK and Canada. I was surprised at the time that so many Hong Kongers who, for example, took part in protests and joined other political activities actually wanted to return to Hong Kong to visit regularly. Now their calculation was, why take part in that protest if it increases risks when I visit Hong Kong? I who when I left Hong Kong thought I would never return until it was free or at least until I could do something more useful for its freedom there than abroad was initially quite angry at these people: how could you allow yourselves to be influenced by the regime so easily? I failed to see that fear had gotten inside of them, and it wasn’t just fear for themselves but for those they knew in Hong Kong. In targeting Anna and the 33 others, the regime is also seeking to drive a wedge between them and other diaspora Hong Kongers, to signal to them that if you have anything to do with these people, you and perhaps also your loved ones in Hong Kong may pay the price—is it really worth it? The thinking behind this strategy was that it would gradually wear most diaspora Hong Kongers down until fewer and fewer would participate in the freedom struggle abroad, and those in turn would be easier to isolate and target. While I understand the fears of Hong Kongers and find the regime’s methods despicable, I also feel we’ve allowed ourselves to become far too susceptible to these tactics and done a poor job of standing together and standing up to the regime. The tendency all too often, unfortunately, is to duck for cover. (Of course, I should also stress there are still plenty of people continuing with our work— “they can’t kill us all.” And the disease of loving freedom and standing up for one’s home they’re seeking to eradicate will only mutate. Or so I suspect. I don’t know for sure….)
And why is the regime taking this escalatory step now? Quite simply, it’s testing the international community. It’s trying to see how much it can get away with. Western democracies have done next to nothing to support the Hong Kong freedom struggle for ages. Rather than becoming a more important part of their China policies, Hong Kong’s been pushed ever further to the fringes. If Western democracies aren’t going to do anything about Jimmy Lai except utter solemn words and call for his release, then surely the regime can get away with its campaign of transnational repression as well. So far, it seems to have wagered correctly: that definitely seems to be the case. The Hong Kong freedom struggle, and freedom and human rights in general, have never been lower on the agenda of Western democracies, and the CCP can see this clearly as it seeks to play them off against each other in the age of Trump. Indeed, Trump’s chaotic destruction of decades-old alliances is a major moment of opportunity for the CCP (see my recent, “The Basic Principles of an Enlightened US Foreign Policy” for more on that).
Of course, an easy argument can and has been made that standing up for Hong Kong, opposing transnational repression, and showing the CCP that Western democracies really do stand by their professed values and are willing to take concrete action to demonstrate that is actually in their own self-interest. But it’s harder to keep telling anyone, let alone Western democracies, that we know what’s good for them better than they do. One wonders how long it will be before they discover this themselves and what terrible thing the CCP might have to do (the invasion of Taiwan, for example) before they see the light (as I thought they might have after the invasion of Ukraine, but only insofar as their views on Russia, and now without the US on that).
When Anna’s father was convicted on February 11, she gave quite a lengthy response and was interviewed in The New York Times. When her father was sentenced to eight months in prison on the 26th, her response was more succinct: “Even one day is too many,” she said in English. And then, switching to Cantonese, as if to signal this was meant primarily for a Hong Kong audience, “Today, my father officially became another political prisoner in Hong Kong. Thank you for your concern over the past year. Hong Kong has now accumulated more than 1,900 political prisoners. I hope society will not forget, will not become numb; if we remember, there will be a response. We must all become stronger.”