Hong Kong’s national security police have declined to comment on whether arrested activist Agnes Chow was escorted to mainland China for a “patriotic” trip in exchange for her passport so that she could study abroad.
At a press conference on Thursday, the chief superintendent of the National Security Department Steve Li evaded two reporters’ questions on whether he could verify Chow’s claims.
Li said the law accorded police the power to set bail conditions, such as requiring an arrested person to post a bail bond and report to a police station regularly. Conditions could be modified depending on the circumstances, such as if school hours clashed with reporting times or if the person had moved and wanted to report to a different police station. Under the national security law, police can apply to the court to confiscate a suspect’s travel documents to ensure they do not leave Hong Kong.
If the person did want to leave, police could also weigh the risks and make arrangements, Li added.
“This is not the law giving us the power to punish her, but to aid our investigation,” the national security officer said in Cantonese. “So if [requests] are raised, we will consider.”
Earlier this month, news that Chow – one of the best known faces of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement – had moved to Canada and would not return to Hong Kong made international headlines. Chow was arrested in 2020 and accused of colluding with foreign forces before being released on bail without charge. Under her bail conditions, she was ordered to surrender her passport and report regularly to police.
In a social media post this month, Chow broke a lengthy silence and said police had offered to return her passport in early July on the condition that she travel with them to Shenzhen. She then spent one day in the southern Chinese city, where she was taken on a tour showcasing the country’s achievements and forced to write a letter of repentance, the activist wrote.
Chow, who said she would not go back to report to police as scheduled in December, is now studying at a university in Toronto.
‘Devoid of integrity’
Speaking to a Japanese television station a day after publishing the social media post, Chow said she believed she could never return to Hong Kong.
Li said on Thursday that Chow had lied and was “completely devoid of integrity.”
“Someone told me they need to go abroad to study, and gave us a lot of things to look at. We believed them, and we changed the bail [reporting schedule] and allowed them to use their [travel] document to leave,” Li said. “They promised that they would come back to report bail.”
Li urged Chow to return to Hong Kong. He said that while it had not been determined whether she had committed a crime, if she did not come back to the city to report bail she would be a fugitive, and police would issue her an arrest warrant.
Chow is among the latest pro-democracy activists to move abroad following Beijing’s imposition of a national security law in 2020 after months of protests and unrest in 2019.
In the same press conference, police announced they were issuing arrest warrants for five overseas activists over the offences of foreign collusion, inciting secession and inciting subversion. The five were Simon Cheng, Frances Hui, Joey Siu, Johnny Fok and Tony Choi.
Police placed HK$1 million bounties on their heads and appealed for information about them.
It came after police in July issued arrest warrants for eight overseas activists, including ex-lawmakers Dennis Kwok and Ted Hui.
On Thursday, Li said police had received around 500 intelligence reports about the eight activists since then. Some of them had “value” and had prompted police to follow up, he added.
Beijing inserted national security legislation directly into Hong Kong’s mini-constitution in June 2020 following a year of pro-democracy protests and unrest. It criminalised subversion, secession, collusion with foreign forces and terrorist acts – broadly defined to include disruption to transport and other infrastructure.
The move gave police sweeping new powers, led to hundreds of convictions amid new legal precedents, whilst dozens of civil society groups disappeared. The authorities say it restored stability and peace to the city, rejecting criticism from trade partners, the UN and NGOs, despite an overall rise in crime.
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