China has revealed about four cases among which two were involved in anti-extradition
protests in Hong Kong. State Television also revealed while saying that one among the four
was sentenced for 11 year of jail for advising US officials about foreign sanctions on Hong
Kong and funding protest.
Changanjian, the official social media account of China’s top law enforcement agency, the
Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, on Thursday made public details of the four
cases involving students who had studied outside the mainland.
They included two students who were studying in Hong Kong and were arrested by the
national security authority last year for taking part in protests in the city in 2019. The protests
began in opposition to an extradition bill but escalated into an anti-government movement.
China on Thursday held its sixth National Security Education Day including activities in
Hong Kong, where Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law last year.
The Changanjian post said a 25-year-old mainland student surnamed Chen, who had studied
at both the University of Hong Kong and Chinese University of Hong Kong, had posted remarks on social media supporting the anti-extradition movement and attacking the
government, including using the slogan “Liberate Hong Kong”.
A second man, surnamed Yang, 26, was accused of being an administrator of an online anti China group while he was in Hong Kong studying. Changanjian said Yang had posted
messages supporting violence during the 2019 turmoil, led a discussion on how to discredit
the local police and had tried to spread those messages to the mainland after being trained by
“a hostile organisation”.
In a third case, a 22-year-old journalism student surnamed Tian, who was said to have
interned at a “well-known Western media” outlet in Beijing, faced a closed-door trial in
November, accused of collecting and providing materials to smear China to an unnamed
Western country “under the instruction of more than 10 officials”.
The Changanjian post said a fourth case involved a student surnamed Zhang who reportedly
turned himself in to authorities in April last year, confessing he had helped a foreign
intelligence organisation to take photos at the military port in Shantou.
The post said the four students had all “confessed to their wrongdoing” but it did not give
further details.
It came after state broadcaster CCTV aired a report revealing more details in the case of
Belizean businessman Lee Henley Hu Xiang, who in April last year became the first foreign
national prosecuted for providing funding to the Hong Kong protests. The broadcaster on
Wednesday revealed that he had been jailed for 11 years.
CCTV said China’s national security agency had found a “large amount of funds” had flowed
from the mainland to Hong Kong through underground channels in June 2019 to support the
protests. It said Shanghai-born Lee, 66, was subsequently identified by the agency as one of
the main sources.
The report also said Lee had facilitated and funded trips for Hong Kong activists to meet
“senior officials from a major Western country” via a middleman surnamed Yang, implying
that Lee was behind a September 2019 trip to the United States by a group of activists
including Joshua Wong Chi-fung. It also said Lee had met US officials who were exploring
sanction options related to Hong Kong and provided advice. The programme repeated
accusations that
Lee had met and supported Hong Kong opposition figures– including “Long Hair” Leung
Kwok-hung in 2011 and activist Alex Chow Yong-kang after 2014’s Occupy Central
movement – to “express his support”.
Chow, who is now studying at the University of California, Berkeley, posted on Facebook on
Thursday that he had only met Lee for “a few minutes” at the exit of Diamond Hill MTR
station in Hong Kong in the summer of 2015.
“Based on my vague memory, Mr Lee said that he was very supportive of the democratic
movement in Hong Kong and China, and he praised the democratic movement in Hong
Kong,” Chow posted. Chow denied he had received any funding from Lee.Lee testified at the trial of Bo Xilai – the disgraced former Chongqing party chief who was
jailed for life for corruption – that Lee and his Shanghai company Meidong had been
involved in a sophisticated US$3 million transaction orchestrated by tycoon Xu Ming to buy
a villa on the French Riviera for Bo’s wife Gu Kailai in 2000, according to the court verdict.
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