Bbc
Chloé Cheung, 19, was named “sought after person” by Hong Kong police
A little over a year ago, Chloé Cheung was sitting on her levels A. Now, she appears on a list of the Chinese government of the dissidents sought.
The choir activist who became a democracy woke up in December that the Hong Kong police issued a reward of $ 1 million HK ($ 100,000; £ 105,000) for information that led to his capture ‘stranger.
“In fact, I just wanted to take a sabbatical year after school,” said Chloé, 19, who lives in London, at the BBC. “But I ended up with a bonus!”
Chloé is the youngest of 19 activists accused of having violated a national security law introduced by Beijing in response to enormous pro-democracy demonstrations in the former British colony five years ago.
In 2021, she and her family moved to the United Kingdom as part of a special visa program for Hong Kongers. She can probably never go back to her hometown and says that she has to pay attention to where she travels.
Her protest work made her a fugitive from the Chinese state, a detail that does not lose me while we meet an icy morning at the Café in the crypt of the Westminster Abbey. In medieval England, the churches provided a sanctuary of the arrest.
The arrest warrant
Hong Kong officials issued Chloé’s mandate on Christmas Eve, using the only photo they seem to have in the file for her – in which she is 11 years old.
“It scared me at the beginning,” she said, but she then published a public response.
“I didn’t want the government to think I was afraid. Because if the Hong Kongers in Hong Kong can no longer speak for themselves, then we outside the city – which can speak freely without fear – we must speak for them. “”
Chloé attended her first demonstrations with her school friends, at the start of Hong Kong demonstrations in 2019. The demonstrators proved to be large against a bill considered to extend the control of China on the territory, which had experienced a semi-autonomy since Great Britain handed him off in 1997.
“Politics has never been in my life before … So I went to the first manifestation with curiosity,” she said.
She saw police demonstrators who cry the police and an officer walking on the neck of a demonstrator.
“I was so shocked,” she said. “This moment changed my way of looking at the world.”
Getty images
At least a million people proved to be protesting the reign of China in Hong Kong during the summer 2019 demonstrations
Having grown up in a city which was part of China but which had kept many of her freedoms – she had thought that Hong Kongers could speak of “what we love and do not like” and “could decide what the future of Hong Kong “.
But the violent repression of the authorities made him realize that this was not the case. She began to join demonstrations, at the beginning without the knowledge of her parents.
“I didn’t tell them at the time because they got on (politics),” she said. But when things started to become “really crazy”, she hit her parents to come with her.
During walking, the police pulled tear gas from them and they had to run away in the metro. Her parents had “raw experience”, she said, not the version they had seen blame the demonstrators on television.
Getty images
Most of the demonstrations were peaceful, but several have turned into violence on both sides. This photo shows a riot police with demonstrators in September 2019
After months of demonstrations, Beijing adopted the National Security Act in 2020. Suddenly, most of the freedoms that had distinguished Hong Kong from continental China – freedom of expression, the right to political assemblies – had disappeared.
The symbols of democracy in the city, including independent statues and newspapers, have been demolished, closed or erased. Those who publicly criticize the government – from teachers to millionaire magnate as the British citizen Jimmy Lai – faced trials and, possibly, of the prison.
In response to repression, the United Kingdom opened its doors to Hong Kongers as part of a new program, the national British visa abroad (BNO). The Chloé family was among the first to adopt the offer, settling in Leeds, who offered the cheapest airbnb they could find. Chloé had to do her GCSES halfway from the school and during a pandemic locking.
At first, she felt isolated. It was difficult to make friends and she had trouble speaking English, she said. There were few other Hong Kongers around.
Unable to allow themselves international fees for students of more than £ 20,000 per year, she took a job with the Hong Kong Committee, a pro-democracy NGO.
Chloe on the ground of Westminster Abbey
When China began to put bonuses on the heads of dissidents in 2023, they targeted eminent protest leaders and opposition politicians. Chloe at the time, still ending her levels, thought she was too small to be a target.
His inclusion underlines the determination of Beijing to pursue militants abroad.
The premium puts a target on the back and encourages third parties to account for its actions in the United Kingdom, she says.
China has been the main country in the past decade, trying to silence the exiled dissidents in the world, according to a report this week.
Another dissident of Hong Kong who said he had been attacked in London blamed the attacks on actors related to the Chinese government.
And last May, British police accused three men of gathering information for Hong Kong and introducing into a house. One of the men was found shortly after death in unclear circumstances.
“They are only interested in Hong Kongers because they want to scare others,” said Chloé.
She says that many of those who have moved in recent years remain silent, in part because they still have a family in Hong Kong.
“Most of the BNO visa holders told me that because they don’t want to take risks,” she said. “It’s sad but we can’t blame them.”
Hong Kong police began to issue bonuses for militants based abroad in 2023
Bonus targets
July 2023: Eight high-level activists are appointed, in particular: Nathan Law, Anna Kwok and Finn Lau, former politicians Dennis Kwok and Ted Hui, lawyer and legal scholar Kevin Yam, Unionniste Mong Siu-Tat, and the online commentator Yuan Gong-yi.december 2023: Simon Cheng, Frances Hui, Joey Siu, Johnny Fok and Tony Choidececember 2024: Tony Chung, Carmen Lau, Chung Kim-Wah, Chloe Cheung, Victor Ho Leung-Mau
On the day of the announcement of his arrest warrant, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, David Lammy, said that the United Kingdom would tolerate “no attempt by foreign governments to force, intimidate, harass or harm their criticisms abroad “. He added that the government was determined to support Hong Kongers in the United Kingdom.
But you have to do more, explains Chloé, who spent the first weeks of this year lobbying in Westminster.
During the last fortnight, she met Prime Minister Keir Starmer at a Lunar New Year event in Downing Street, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Shadow Priti Patel, who tweeted later: “We do not must not give a thumb to a transnational repression in the United Kingdom. ”
Chloé Cheung, 19, woke up the day before Christmas in the arrest warrant
But she is concerned about whether the recent openings of the United Kingdom for China could mean fewer protections for Hong Kongers.
“We just don’t know what will happen to us and if the British government will protect us if they really want to protect their trade relations with China.”
Is that afraid in the streets of London? It is not as bad as political activists at home.
“When I think about what (they) face … It is actually not a big problem that I obtained generosity abroad.”
