HONG KONG — One of Hong Kong’s best-known pro-democracy activists, who moved to Canada to pursue additional research, mentioned she wouldn’t return to town to fulfill her bail situations, turning into the most recent politician to flee Hong Kong underneath Beijing’s crackdown on dissidents.
Agnes Chow, a well-known younger face within the metropolis’s once-vibrant pro-democracy motion, was arrested in 2020 underneath a Beijing-imposed nationwide safety regulation that was enacted following 2019 anti-government protests. She was launched on bail but additionally served greater than six months in jail for a separate case over her position within the protests.
After Chow was launched from jail in 2021 for that case, she needed to often report back to the police. She mentioned in an Instagram submit on Sunday evening that the strain brought about her “mental illnesses” and influenced her choice to not return to town.
Many of her friends have been jailed, arrested, pressured into self-exile or silenced after the introduction of the safety regulation in 2020.
The suppression of town’s pro-democracy motion highlights that freedoms promised to the previous British colony when it returned to China in 1997 have been eroded drastically. But Beijing and Hong Kong have hailed the safety regulation for bringing again stability to the semi-autonomous Chinese metropolis.
Chow mentioned the authorities in July supplied to return her passport for her to pursue research in Canada underneath the situation that she would journey to mainland China with them. She agreed, she mentioned, and her journey in August included a go to to an exhibition on China’s achievements and the headquarters of tech large Tencent. The authorities later returned her passport to her.
After contemplating the state of affairs in Hong Kong, her security and her well being, Chow mentioned she “probably won’t return” to town once more.
“I don’t want to be forced to do things that I don’t want to do anymore and be forced to visit mainland China again. If it continues, my body and my mind will collapse even though I am safe,” she wrote.
Hong Kong police on Monday “strongly condemned” Chow‘s move, without naming her, saying it was “against and challenging the rule of law.”
“Police urge the woman to immediately turn back before it is too late and not to choose a path of no return. Otherwise, she will bear the stigma of ‘fugitive’ for the remainder of her life,” the police mentioned in an announcement.
The police didn’t reply to questions from The Associated Press on Chow’s mainland China journey.
Chow rose to fame with different outstanding younger activists Joshua Wong and Nathan Law as a scholar chief for his or her activism within the 2010s, together with pro-democracy protests in 2014.
She co-founded the now-defunct pro-democracy celebration Demosisto with Wong and Law, however the celebration was disbanded on June 30, 2020, the identical day the safety regulation was enacted.
Wong is now in custody and faces a subversion cost that would lead to life imprisonment if convicted. Law fled to Britain and the police in July supplied a reward of 1 million Hong Kong {dollars} ($127,600) for data resulting in his arrest.
