Tony Chung: Pro-democracy activist flees Hong Kong to hunt asylum in UK | EUROtoday

Sign up for the View from Westminster e mail for skilled evaluation straight to your inbox

Get our free View from Westminster e mail

One of Hong Kong’s youngest pro-democracy activists has fled town and formally utilized for political asylum within the UK after finishing his jail time period.

Tony Chung, 22, breached a supervision order to hunt asylum attributable to fixed scrutiny in Hong Kong, which put him below an “enormous amount of stress”.

Chung was arrested below the Beijing-imposed nationwide safety legislation following the democracy protests in 2019 in Hong Kong. He was sentenced to 43 months in jail in November 2021 on prices of secession and cash laundering.

Critics of the federal government say the draconian legislation, which carries a most sentence of life imprisonment, has been weaponised to stifle protest and used to arrest almost 300 folks since its implementation in 2020.

In a Facebook publish on Thursday, Chung introduced that he had arrived within the UK earlier this week searching for political refuge after being put below “stringent surveillance” following his launch from jail in June.

Chung was reportedly granted permission from the Correctional Services Department to journey to Japan for Christmas. He took a flight from Japan to succeed in the UK on Wednesday.

“After making the decision ‘my heart sank’,” Chung wrote, adding: “I dedicated my life to social movements since age 14”.

“We shouldn’t be those leaving.”

He stated the police had been monitoring his checking account data and banned him from accepting a summer time job, saying he wasn’t allowed to work in that “specific business”.

“In the past six months with no income from any work, the national security police officers kept on coercing and inducing me to join them,” he wrote.

“From October onwards until the present day, I have intermittently fallen ill. During this period, I sought medical consultations from both Western and Chinese doctors, all of whom diagnosed my condition as a result of significant mental stress and psychological factors, leading to a weakened immune system,” he added.

Chung advised the Washington Post that he was made to participate in a obligatory “deradicalisation” program in detention the place guards stated to those that had been detained that they had been “manipulated” by the US.

He is the second pro-democracy activist to depart the Asian finance hub in December after former pupil chief, Agnes Chow, introduced she had moved to Canada and wouldn’t return to Hong Kong to fulfill her bail situations.

Several different activists, together with Nathan Law, Anna Kwok and Finn Lau, have fled overseas fearing arrest and now have bounties positioned on them.

Meanwhile, a Hong Kong court docket sentenced three activists to as much as six years in jail for his or her involvement in a foiled plot to bomb public buildings.

The activists, aged between 20 to 23, had been a part of the pro-democracy “Returning Valiant” group.

The trio was arrested in July 2021 and subsequently charged with “conspiracy to commit terrorism” below the safety legislation.

The court docket heard that Ho Yu-wang, Kwok Man-hei, and Cheung Ho-yeung had deliberate to make bombs utilizing the explosives and positioned them in numerous public buildings.

Ho, who was arrested on the age of 17, was “primarily responsible for making the explosives”, in line with prosecutors. He was sentenced to 6 years in jail.

Kwok was handed two-and-a-half years in jail, whereas Cheung obtained six years for being the primary to lift the thought of “targeting government offices, court buildings and police quarters”.