Police in Hong Kong have raided the home of Nathan Law’s family, taking relatives of the UK-exiled pro-democracy activist away for questioning.
Officers from the national security department visited the housing estate where Law’s family live and took his parents and brother in for questioning in the early hours of Tuesday morning. So far no arrests have been made.
A spokesperson for the Hong Kong police said the people taken for questioning on Tuesday morning were “suspected of assisting persons wanted by police [for continuing to] commit acts and engage in activities that endanger national security. Investigation is under way and further operations, including arrest, may be made.”
Contacted by the Guardian, Law said: “I can firmly declare that the involved parties have no financial connection with me, and my work is totally unrelated to them. The idea of ‘getting assistance from them’ is completely absurd.”
Police recently issued a HK$1m (£99,100) bounty for Law, a former pro-democracy legislator who fled Hong Kong for the UK in 2020. At the time, he said he had cut off all contact with his family.
On 3 July, Hong Kong police issued arrest warrants for Law and seven other overseas-based activists, accusing them of violating the territory’s national security law while in exile. The warrants were accompanied by bounties for each of the activists.
The move was condemned by the governments of the UK, the US and Australia, where most of the activists are based.
Last week, Law said that his life would become more dangerous as a result of the arrest warrants.
Many observers have noted that Hong Kong authorities are increasingly using tactics similar to those employed by security forces in mainland China to intimidate critics overseas. Harassing the families of dissidents is one such method.
Alicia Kearns, a Conservative MP and chair of the Commons foreign affairs committee, said the raids were “utterly outrageous” and clearly an attempt to “lure” Law back to the territory so he could be imprisoned.
Kearns said the government should have called in China’s ambassador to the UK to complain after the bounties were announced for the activists.
She and other MPs urged the government earlier this month to enforce sanctions against Hong Kong officials involved in targeting UK-based pro-democracy activists.
Mark Sabah, the UK and EU director for the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, called the actions sinister. “This latest escalation is clearly designed to intimidate and silence Hongkongers abroad from exposing the true nature of the Hong Kong authorities and their Beijing masters,” he said.
In the days after the warrants were issued, five people in Hong Kong were arrested and accused of violating the national security law by receiving funds to support the overseas activists. Some of the arrested people were linked to an app that promoted businesses sympathetic to the 2019 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, according to local media. The app was removed from app stores last week.
