The new centre of dissent: Britain becomes hub for Hong Kong activists

The UK has become an international hub for Hong Kong dissidents as China’s harsh new security law leads to an exodus of pro-democracy politicians, campaigners and protesters, who now face jail terms for their activism.

Longstanding cultural ties, a newly welcoming government and Covid-era travel restrictions that have in effect closed off other potential destinations, such as Canada and Australia, have boosted the number of new arrivals to Britain.

Britain offered millions of Hong Kong residents a path to citizenship after the passage of the security law in June, saying the law breached terms of the 1997 handover from colonial rule. The government predicts up to 200,000 will make the move in the next five years.

But prominent exiles have formed a vanguard. Those who have already arrived include two whom Hong Kong authorities put on an international police wanted list for “inciting secession” and “collusion” with foreign powers.

Nathan Law is in his 20s and has served spells in the city’s legislature and its jails during his years-long fight for democracy. He has just been named to Time’s list of 100 most influential people of 2020.

Honcques Laus, 18, who last year wrote a book calling for Hong Kong independence, had never been to Europe before he flew to London to seek asylum in June.

Months earlier Simon Cheng, a former staffer at the British consulate in Hong Kong, fled to the UK after he was detained and said he was tortured by Chinese authorities last year. The experience turned the Hong Kong citizen into an activist virtually overnight.

“That is a huge, massive change for me, I’ve gone from an ordinary person to be a frontline activist,” said Cheng, who describes himself as a political fugitive. “I feel the Chinese Communist party pushed me that way, and there is no way back.”

All have continued their activism, even as they try to find their feet in a country that none of them would have imagined calling home a year ago. There is an added layer of distance to the homesickness for Law and Cheng, who say they have severed ties with their families to avoid them coming under pressure from authorities.

“I take my reference from human rights fighters in the Chinese mainland: their children can’t go to school, their partners are locked down,” Law said. “My move abroad was more pre-emptive, so I can continue activism.”

The US may once have been a more obvious destination for Chinese dissidents as it has for decades offered asylum to activists ranging from veterans of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests to citizen activists such as Chen Guangcheng, a blind lawyer.

But the Trump administration’s emphasis has been on deterring immigration, not welcoming refugees, and over the past year tensions with Beijing have escalated sharply.

Law said he did not want Hong Kong’s fight for democracy to get subsumed in the increasingly bitter US-China showdown. Instead he hoped to use the UK as a base to build a broader coalition of support for his city across other western capitals.

“The US might have been an obvious choice: I studied at Yale and did a lot of advocacy there. But the narrative there is of a kind of ideological warfare between two countries,” he said. “I want to expand our fight to a multilateral one, with the involvement of democracies around the world. We need a value-based community to hold China accountable.”

He sees drumming up international support as a key part of his role in exile, because lobbying for support abroad has in effect been criminalised.

“Under the national security law, it’s difficult for people in Hong Kong to spell out demands on the international front. So we must put in place structures outside Hong Kong,” he said. “We (exiles) will bear more responsibility for talking to foreign political forces.”

Still, he has not yet put in his formal application for asylum. “Sometimes I haven’t quite got used to the idea of being a refugee,” he said.

Cheng is living off his savings, focused on campaigning while he can afford it, including organising protests outside the Chinese embassy, and submitting a complaint to Ofcom, the UK media regulator, about biased coverage from the state-owned broadcaster CGTN.

“With the pandemic and lockdown, I haven’t even had a chance to find a job,” he said. “But to be honest, I feel activism for Hong Kong should be the top priority.”

He is also one of the founders of Haven Assistance, an online platform with information – he says only public and legal details – for others seeking asylum abroad. Cheng runs the UK branch; other activists help new arrivals to other countries including Canada, the US, Australia and Taiwan.

Cheng says they get 10-15 inquiries a day about moving to the UK. The British government’s route to citizenship does not cover anyone born after the 1997 handover to Chinese rule, and critics have said this excludes many of the young people who were in the frontline of the last year’s protests, and want the scheme expanded.

They include young campaigners such as Laus, who claimed political asylum after he arrived and is now hoping to get back to university if he is granted refugee status.

But while his education may have stopped, his campaigning has not. He has started a letter-writing campaign to the foreign secretary and top diplomats in the US, Korea and other countries, calling for stronger action.

“I am calling on the liberal world to impose sanctions on the Chinese government and the Hong Kong government for the violation of civil liberties,” he said.