The UK has become a hunting ground for authoritarian regimes targeting dissidents, journalists and students. It is appalling that Hong Kong activists who sought refuge here met fear, harassment and intimidation from the government they had escaped, only to receive inadequate protection and little coordinated response (Hong Kong democracy campaigner accuses UK police of asking her to ‘self-censor’, 1 August).
Amnesty International has repeatedly documented the Chinese government’s transnational repression, including the surveillance and intimidation of students and activists here in the UK. This includes an alarming escalation in threats against the Hong Kong community, with bounties placed on the heads of UK-based pro-democracy activists.
Last week, parliament’s joint committee on human rights issued a report exposing major gaps that are putting Hong Kong and Chinese activists’ freedom at risk, including the lack of a clear definition of transnational repression, patchy police responses, no dedicated reporting mechanism, and failure to collect even basic data on the scale of the threat.
Initial steps taken by the government to address transnational repression are welcome, but the recent police response, as illustrated by your report, exposes the huge gap between policy and practice. The police must be given more extensive and consistent training to increase their awareness of these incidents and must act to protect Carmen Lau and other activists’ right to free speech – they must not be complicit in silencing them.
The government must now act on the above recommendations from the committee’s report. Protections must be real, visible and trusted by those they are supposed to serve. It must work with affected activists and communities to define transnational repression, track it and confront it, before silence becomes the new norm.
Sara Rydkvist
Hong Kong programme director, Amnesty International UK
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