This article was originally published by Radio Free Asia and is reprinted with permission.
Hong Kong police say they will keep up a crackdown on dissent in the name of “national security,” citing the actions of overseas activists and “interference by foreign forces” as an ongoing threat.
Deputy Police Commissioner Andrew Kan, who heads the police National Security Department, said the police will continue to focus on threats to “national security” and keep up pressure on overseas pro-democracy activists by questioning their family members and associates in Hong Kong.
Asked if there is still an ongoing threat to national security in Hong Kong, Kan said it has “been there all along.”
“Some people who have absconded overseas continue to commit crimes of endangering national security,” Kan told a news conference in Hong Kong on Tuesday. “We think this is major interference by foreign forces.”
Since Beijing imposed two national security laws banning public opposition and dissent in the city, blaming “hostile foreign forces” for the protests, hundreds of thousands have voted with their feet amid plummeting human rights rankings, shrinking press freedom and widespread government propaganda in schools.
Some fled to the United Kingdom on the British National Overseas, or BNO, visa program. Others have made their homes anew in the United States, Canada, Australia and Germany.
Many are continuing their activism and lobbying activists, yet struggle with exile in some way, worrying about loved ones back home while facing threats to their personal safety from supporters of Beijing overseas.
Hong Kong’s leaders have vowed to pursue activists in exile for life.
Kan said “local terrorism” was also still a threat, while “terrorist and violent speech are being spread both online and offline.”
“Soft confrontation”
Meanwhile, there was a growing threat from “soft confrontation” with the authorities, Kan said. Previously, Hong Kong officials have suggested that works of art could be a form of “soft confrontation.”
Police have made more than 300 arrests under two national security laws passed in the wake of the 2019 protest movement, according to their annual crime report.
“As of the end of December 2024, the National Security Department of the Police had arrested a total of 316 persons,” the police said in its 2024 crime report. “Among them, around 60% had been charged.”
The arrests were made under both the 2020 National Security Law, which was imposed on the city by Beijing in the wake of the 2019 protests, and the 2023 Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, passed in March 2023 at Beijing’s insistence following a two-decade delay due to widespread public opposition.
The report didn’t provide a breakdown of arrests under each law.
More than 10,000 people have been arrested and at least 2,800 prosecuted in a citywide crackdown in the wake of the 2019 protest movement, mostly under public order charges or colonial-era sedition laws.
According to the U.S.-based Hong Kong Democracy Council, 1,920 of those defendants are classed as political prisoners –- peaceful critics of the government. Defendants in national security cases are far less likely to be granted bail, swelling the population of remand prisoners.
Critics said the authorities in Hong Kong seem to want to keep up a sense of political tension despite the disappearance of most forms of political dissent, and that the police don’t seem to want to end the crackdown.
“Foreign countries, which have their own threats to national security, use methods that achieve a balance between practical results and public peace of mind,” current affairs commentator Johnny Lau told RFA Cantonese in a recent interview. “It’s about both governance and prosperity, and the overall atmosphere in society.”
“It’s clear that the authorities could actually relax their methods now.”
Hong Kong saw a total of 94,747 crimes in 2024, an increase of 5% compared with 2023, with 10,485 cases of violent crime, a rise of 3.6% on the previous year.
Meanwhile, crimes of deception rose by 11.7% during the year, 61.8% of which were online crimes.
Applications to join the police force rose by one third from 2023, to 897, following a publicity campaign in Hong Kong’s schools and universities, the report said.
