HONG KONG—Dozens of people in Hong Kong braved heavy rain on Friday evening to write postcards to 12 fugitives arrested by the Chinese regime at sea last month to offer comfort during the upcoming mid-Autumn festival.
The 12 were arrested on Aug. 23 accused of illegal entry into mainland Chinese waters after setting off from Hong Kong in a boat bound for Taiwan.
All were accused of committing crimes in Hong Kong related to the anti-government protests that erupted last year. Ten had been charged, released on bail and not allowed to leave Hong Kong, and all are now being detained in neighboring Shenzhen.
On Friday, activists set up booths in two districts to collect postcards, with several dozen passing through to leave their messages.
“The security agency will see this postcard, but I don’t care,” wrote recent university graduate Zol Chan, 22, on her card. “Please take care of yourselves.”
“Seeing their mothers crying in their press conference, I feel heartbroken and sad,” she said later. Relatives of some of the detainees held a news conference on Saturday to demand their urgent return and plead for them to be allowed to call home and consult lawyers appointed by the families and not the Chinese regime.
As he wrote his message, university student Raymond Cho, 19, said he felt a responsibility to tell them “that there are still a lot of us who care about them.”
Ten of the detainees had been charged with offenses such as manufacturing explosives, arson, rioting, or assaulting police.
One other was accused of “colluding with foreign forces” under a national security law that Beijing imposed on Hong Kong in June.
It is unclear whether authorities will allow the postcards to reach the detainees. This year, the mid-Autumn festival, a full moon harvest celebration across Asia, falls on Oct. 1.
