Tag: hong kong

End Of An Era: Pro-Democracy Icon Jimmy Lai Found Guilty Of Sedition In Hong Kong

The high profile trial of Hong Kong’s foremost pro-democracy media tycoon has just wrapped up, and it puts a symbolic cap on the end of an era in terms of prior large scale anti-China activism in the city.

Jimmy Lai, who long spearheaded huge protests and local media criticism of Beijing, was found guilty on Monday in a landmark national security case, marking an end to the 156-dady trial. He could spend the rest of his life in prison based the series of sedition-related convictions.

Prosecutors accused him of conspiring with senior executives of the fiercely pro-democracy and independent Chinese-language newspaper Apple Daily and others to request foreign forces to impose sanctions or blockades to thwart Beijing influence in Hong Kong. 

Further, he’s alleged to have engaged in other hostile activities against Hong Kong or China, which hearkens back to prior years of long-running street protests which sometimes descended into violence and vandalism, or at times large student takeovers of entire university buildings.

China had long alleged a foreign intelligence ‘hidden hand’ behind the protests. This was in part due to student activists being in semi-regular communication with Western officials and NGOs, and sometimes even honored at events hosted in Europe or the US.

A panel of three government-approved judges convicted the 78-year-old, after Lai had consistently denied all charges. He was first detained in August 2020 under Hong Kong’s Beijing-imposed national security law.

The security law has been widely seen as the final nail in the coffin of Hong Kong’s long-running autonomy, and was a response to the major 2019 protests which were widely covered in international press reports.

Lai upon the verdict being read appeared upbeat, as he waved to supporters in the public gallery, which included his wife, son, and Hong Kong’s Catholic Cardinal Joseph Zen.

Western leaders, including of the US and Britain, are expected to lobby for his freedom, especially given that this is being viewed as ultimately a crackdown on Western values in influence on one of the globe’s main financial hubs.

Sebastien Lai, one of his children, issued a statement on behalf of the family, saying they are saddened by the verdict, describing it as a twisting of justice. “In the 800-page verdict they have there is essentially nothing, nothing that incriminates him,” Lai told reporters in London. “This is a perfect example of how the national security law has been molded and weaponized against someone who essentially said stuff that they didn’t like.”

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Hong Kong Sets Out Plan to Regulate Crypto, Encourage Tokenization

In its second policy statement on the subject, the government said it intends to take further steps to regulate digital asset service providers, exchanges and stablecoins.

What to know:

  • Hong Kong’s government released its second major policy statement on digital assets.
  • It said it wants to establish a regulatory framework focusing on risk management and investor protection as it strives to become a global hub for the industry.
  • The Securities and Futures Commission will oversee the regulation of custodians, digital asset service providers, exchanges and stablecoins, with public consultations on licensing regimes starting soon.

Hong Kong’s government released its second major policy statement on digital assets, underlining its pledge to set the region up as a global hub for the industry and saying it plans to establish a regulatory regime that puts risk management and investor protection center stage.

The framework will be overseen by the Securities and Futures Commission and apply to custodians, digital asset service providers, exchanges and stablecoins, the government said Thursday. Public consultations on the licensing regimes will start shortly, it said.

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Ex-Royal Marine, 37, accused of spying for China on Hong Kong activists after fighting the Taliban and Somali pirates is found dead in a park

A Former Royal Marine accused of spying for Hong Kong has been found dead in ‘unexplained’ circumstances last night.

Matthew Trickett, 37 was found dead in a park near his home just days after being charged with carrying out surveillance and hostile reconnaissance on pro-democracy activists in the UK for the Hong Kong intelligence service.

The suspected spy, who worked as an immigration enforcement officer for the Home Office, due to appear at the Old Bailey on Friday charged with betraying his country.

In a statement, his family said: ‘We’re mourning the loss of a much-loved son, brother and family man.’

Speaking of the Royal Marine’s death, a local resident told MailOnline: ‘This has been extremely disturbing for residents.

‘Police have been going around asking for doorbell cam in the hope of tracing his movements.

‘The next thing we heard, this was an unexplained death and now we hear about the spying charges he was facing.’

Police said they are currently treating the death as unexplained.

But it can be revealed that prosecutors wanted to remand him in custody for his own safety, after a previous suicide attempt following his arrest.

Despite this, the Afghanistan veteran was released on bail last Monday.

In an extraordinary espionage case which is the first of its kind, Trickett and two other men, Chi Leung Wai, 38, who works at Heathrow Airport for UK Border Force and Chung Biu Yuen, 63, a trade official, are jointly accused of carrying out surveillance operations in the UK allegedly targeting dissidents of the regime.

It is the first that anyone has been charged with spying on British soil for the Hong Kong intelligence service.

The trio were charged last Monday under the new National Security Act brought in last year to target those working secretly for hostile states within the UK.

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Hong Kong man jailed for “sedition” for criticizing government online

53-year-old Raymond Chen has been sentenced for four months for violating Hong Kong’s “sedition” law. He had shared 23 posts online, criticizing Beijing and the Hong Kong government. Some of the posts called for the independence of Hong Kong.

Chen pleaded guilty to sharing posts criticizing the government. He shared the posts on his Telegram Channel between July 2020 and June 2022.

The Telegram Channel, called “HK’s upcoming War of Independence,” had over 500 users. Some of the posts had the slogan “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times.” The slogan was the used for the 2019 pro-democracy protests.

Other posts claimed that the police and MTR Corporation were working with the triads. Others had images of a national emblem that had been desecrated. And other posts blamed the government for the Covid-19 pandemic and sparking the anti-government protests in 2019.

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Mysterious drone attacks on US war ships solved

A mysterious series of attacks on US Navy warships off the coast of California in 2019 have been revealed to be caused by a cluster of drones launched from a Hong Kong cargo ship, a new report says.

The bizarre incidents, which were reported between March 30 and July 30, 2019 on seven warships and had led to speculation that they were caused by unidentified aerial phenomena or UFOs, came to light Friday after the publication of previously classified US Navy memos and ships’ logs, obtained by The Drive under Freedom to Information legislation.

The drone attacks caused high-level concern because they took place near a sensitive naval training area near the Channel Islands. Nearly two years after the attacks, Marine General Kenneth McKenzie Jr. called them “the most concerning tactical development since the rise of the improvised explosive device in Iraq.”

Among the revelations in The Drive’s cache of documents were that on July 15, 2019, Navy warships reported drones that they suspected were being launched from a Hong Kong civilian cargo ship, the MS Bass Strait. The initial report of the drone clusters was reported by sailors on the USS Bunker Hill, which recorded 11 drone attacks, according to the newly released documents.

The US ship called in a special team known as SNOOPIE — Ship Nautical or Otherwise Photographic Interpretation — to document the drones. Sailors also radioed the nearby Bass Strait, but the crew did not respond, according to the logs obtained by The Drive.

Another US Navy ship — the USS Paul Hamilton — which was on its way to Long Beach, California, also summoned its SNOOPIE team to document drones above their ship. The crew noted in their internal report to the US Navy that “MV Bass Strait likely using UAVs (unidentified aerial vehicles) to conduct surveillance on US Naval Forces.”

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Disney censors The Simpsons episode with Tiananmen Square reference in Hong Kong

Disney+ has censored an episode of The Simpsons in Hong Kong, where the streaming service recently launched. The episode was censored over references to the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Until June last year, Hong Kong operated separately from China. Hong Kongers enjoyed more freedoms than the mainland.

However, since Beijing enforced the national security law in Hong Kong, the censorship laws enforced in China started applying on the island. 

On social media, Disney+ subscribers began reporting that an episode in Season 16 had been removed in Hong Kong. 

We’ve managed to confirm that the Season 16 episode “Goo Goo Gai Pan” has been removed in Hong Kong.

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Georgia Senate Candidate Jon Ossoff Quietly Discloses Financial Ties to Pro-CCP Hong Kong Media Company

Georgia Democrat and Senate candidate Jon Ossoff has been compensated by a Hong Kong media conglomerate whose owner has spoken out against pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, according to his most recent financial disclosure.

Ossoff, whose role as CEO of a London-based producer of investigative documentaries has drawn scrutiny over the years, reported in an amended financial statement that he has received at least $5,000 from PCCW Media Limited over the last two years — a detail that has previously gone unreported. Ossoff did not disclose his ties to PCCW in his initial financial report, which he filed in May.

PCCW, the largest telecom agency in Hong Kong, is run by Chairman Richard Li, son of Hong Kong’s richest man, Li Ka-shing. Li also serves as a councilor for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, D.C., think tank. But for years, Li has spoken out against Hong Kong independence and the pro-democracy protests that have rocked the island as the Chinese Communist Party has consolidated control.

An Ossoff campaign spokesperson told National Review that the payments stemmed from the airing of “two investigations produced by Jon’s company of ISIS war crimes against women and girls,” representing “one of dozens of TV stations and distributors in more than 30 countries that have aired Jon’s work.”

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