By Jessie Pang and Anna-Lisa Fuglesang
HONG KONG, Feb 26 (Reuters) – A Hong Kong court sentenced the father of a wanted pro-democracy activist to eight months in prison on Thursday under the city’s national security law, after he attempted to terminate her insurance policy and withdraw the funds.
Kwok Yin-sang, 69, was found guilty on February 11 for “attempting to deal with, directly or indirectly, any funds or other financial assets or economic resources” belonging to an “absconder” under the city’s homegrown national security law, also known as Article 23.
He is the first person in the city to be charged and convicted with the offence. He had pleaded not guilty and did not testify at the trial. In court on Thursday, he appeared calm and waved goodbye before being taken back into custody.
His daughter, Anna Kwok, helps lead the Washington-based advocacy group Hong Kong Democracy Council, and is one of 34 overseas activists wanted by Hong Kong national security police.
She is accused of colluding with foreign forces and police have offered a bounty of HK$1 million ($128,000) for her arrest.
“To sentence my father under the pretext that his actions lowered the ‘likelihood’ of my return to stand trial is not justice; it is a judicial farce,” Anna Kwok said after the sentencing.
The insurance policy was never in her name, whether as owner or policyholder, and she had never exercised any control over it, she added in a statement.
“My father was convicted and sentenced under the guise of ‘national security’, she said. “In truth, this is guilt by blood, this is hostage taking. This is transnational repression.”
Her father was accused of trying to withdraw funds totalling HK$88,609 ($11,342) from an insurance policy that he bought for her when she was two years old.
Magistrate Andy Cheng said Kwok’s case was a serious one under the national security law and had nothing to do with family ties.
“There is no such thing as … collective punishment, and it has absolutely nothing to do with whether the defendant and the fugitive are family,” Cheng said.
Asked what she would like to tell her father, Anna Kwok told Reuters in Washington before the sentencing that she wanted to hug him and apologise for putting him in such a difficult situation.
“Asian dads are not very known for showing affection with hugs and I realized this year, I actually … don’t think I’ve ever hugged my dad since I became an adult,” she said.
China imposed a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong in 2020 and the city’s legislature passed a second set of national security laws – Article 23 – in 2024, to plug what authorities called “loopholes” in the national security regime.
(Reporting by Jessie Pang in Hong Kong and Anna-Lisa Fuglesang in Washington; Editing by Anne Marie Roantree, Jacqueline Wong, Stephen Coates and Thomas Derpinghaus)
