China arrests 12 fleeing Hong Kong by speedboat: City police
29 August, 2020
A dozen persons fleeing Hong Kong on a speedboat, including an activist arrested under the new national security law, have already been captured by China, police in the town said on Friday (Aug 28).
The boat was intercepted by the coastguard, police said, with local media saying it was on the way to Taiwan, an island that regularly offers sanctuary to people escaping the mainland.
Multiple media reports said the 12 included Andy Li, who was simply arrested earlier this month for alleged collusion with foreign forces - a crime beneath the new Beijing-imposed law that posesses possible life sentence.
The pro-Beijing Wen Wei Po newspaper, citing unnamed sources, said others onboard included several arrested for their part in the sometimes violent protests that wracked Hong Kong for much of 2019.
Beijing imposed its national security law in June after tiring of the protests.
Overnight, certain opinions and expressions in previously free-wheeling Hong Kong became illegal, and activists have spoken of a deep chilling effect which has seen books yanked from libraries and publishers rush to amend their titles.
Hong Kong's administration insists regulations hasn't impinged on the rights to freedom of speech and assembly guaranteed to the territory when it returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
But several pro-democracy figures have gone the city because it arrived to effect, fearful that they may be embroiled in a Beijing dragnet and disappear in to the mainland's opaque and Communist Party-run justice system.
Before the new law was imposed in response to the huge protests that erupted in June 2019, Hong Kong police had arrested a lot more than 9,000 people, among whom more than 600 were charged with rioting, which posesses maximum penalty of 10 years in jail.
At least 50 former Hong Kong protesters had already requested asylum in a variety of jurisdictions prior to the COVID-19 pandemic ended most international travel. Hundreds more have relocated to democratic Taiwan.
Hong Kong police said the 12, aged between 16 and 33, were being held by mainland authorities.
They gave no information on when they will be handed back again to Hong Kong.
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