Beaten, stalked, and terrorised—this is the reality for many exiled Hongkongers living under the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) shadow in the UK.
Despite fleeing the cruel Beijing regime, men and women who successfully leave Hong Kong to find sanctuary in Britain face ongoing intimidation from CCP agents.
Physical attacks, brutal beatings, and even threats of arrest on British soil have now become a concerning occurrence—as has impunity for those responsible.
Chan was pulled into the consulate grounds, his hair pulled from his scalp, and left bloodied and bruised in the Oct. 17 attack carried out in full view of police.
He had been protesting against Chinese leader Xi Jinping, alongside others, when he was viciously assaulted.
He was only saved after a police officer broke protocol to enter consulate grounds and pulled him to safety.
Despite Greater Manchester Police confirming in November it had identified a number of offences committed during the incident, no one has yet been arrested.
The protester’s assault is just one of many examples of Chinese state repression in Britain that Hongkongers say demonstrates the failure of UK authorities to hold the CCP to account.
Kicked and Punched
The Epoch Times has spoken to a number of Hongkongers who have been victims of Chinese persecution since fleeing to the UK.Many more are too frightened to speak out, believing they cannot be protected from the CCP’s sinister tentacles in Britain.
Finn Lau is one activist who isn’t afraid of using his voice, despite almost losing his life.
The Hong Kong-born chartered surveyor became involved in activism whilst visiting the UK for work in 2019.
He attended protests outside the Chinese Embassy and also set up a Hong Kong pro-democracy group, opposing China’s draconian extradition bill.
When he returned home to Hong Kong a short while later, he was arrested and detained by police.
The 29-year-old was held for more than 50 hours before being released.
Fearing he could face permanent imprisonment, he left Hong Kong for the UK, where he has remained since.
But although Lau escaped prison, he could not escape the CCP—even in the UK.
In late 2020, while on a walk just minutes from his London home, he was brutally attacked by three masked men.
“I thought I lost my right eye immediately, I thought I was blinded,” Lau told The Epoch Times. “They kept kicking and punching my head further to a point that I lost consciousness and I don’t know how long I passed out on the street for.
“I was so fortunate to wake up and then I took a photo of myself and sent it to my teammates at that time.”
He believes the three men who attacked him were agents of the Chinese regime.
Lau was rushed to hospital, where doctors worked for five to six hours to stop the bleeding.
He said he doesn’t know if he would be alive today had it not been for the doctors’ swift actions.
The incident was reported to UK police, but no one has ever been arrested over the serious assault.
“For the first two months after the attack, I got severe concussion, I got severe PTSD—post-traumatic syndrome,” Lau added.
“I dared not to leave my house except for necessary grocery buying. But then, two months after the attack happened, I just realised that, well, life and death is just a matter of destiny.
“So somehow it’s destined and is something that we couldn’t really control by ourselves.
“So after that, I have no fear of the CCP any more.”
Lau said he has now come to terms with the fact he can never return to Hong Kong while the CCP is in power.
‘China Keeps Chasing Me’
Lau said he is aware of other incidents involving Hongkongers who have been stalked and followed by pro-CCP individuals in Britain.In one incident in Scotland, a man from Hong Kong was followed for three days before being mugged of his mobile phone, according to Lau.
The victim believed his attackers to be connected to the CCP.
Another incident involved an individual who approached protesters and MPs during a demonstration in central London, who claimed to be a UK government official.
According to Lau, checks made with the authorities found that no government official matching the individual’s details had been present at the protest.
Mark Sabah, UK and EU director of The Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation (CFHK), hears the haunting stories of Hongkongers facing persecution in Britain almost daily.
“I spoke to one young Hongkonger in Scotland who said to me, ‘I ran away from China but China keeps chasing me,’” he told The Epoch Times.
“And what this 20-year-old young woman was saying is that even though she got out, supposedly for a safe life in the United Kingdom, she still faces harassment and intimidation by mainland Chinese people, usually working for the United Front—which is the overground arm of the CCP—who are very, very active in university campuses. They work often through Confucius Institutes.
“And she said whenever friends gather, somebody shows up with a camera to film us. Or whenever we have a little gathering to talk about our rights and our freedom or to remember Hong Kong, [they] do things like that.”
In some instances, the young people are followed home, according to Sabah.
“She actually told me another story that she was with three friends in a cafe in Edinburgh, when someone came up to them and said, are you from Hong Kong? And she said yes.
“And they grabbed the coffees of these young girls and threw them in their faces.
“So of course people call the police immediately and the cafe called the police and they came in to take statements. And then they said, ‘Well, there’s nothing we can do.’”
Sabah added that the harassment and the intimidation many Hongkongers have experienced in the UK is “very real” and “beyond anecdotal.”
Illegal Chinese Police Stations
The CFHK has worked tirelessly to build relationships with Hongkongers who have settled in the UK and elsewhere.The organisation was set up to fight for Hong Kong and its people as the Chinese regime continues its suppression of the city.
Despite legal obligations and repeated promises that Hong Kong would continue to enjoy its existing freedoms, since Britain’s 1997 handover China has “destroyed Hong Kong’s free media, freedom of speech, free assembly, education, and many other aspects of the democratic way of life that had become the norm,” the group says.
Sabah said there has been a growing climate of fear among Hongkongers in Britain, particularly in recent times.
“Lots of journalists call and say, ‘Can you find somebody who will talk?’ And 99 percent of the time the answer is no,” he told The Epoch Times.
“And the reason is very simple—even though they’re here in the UK, they’re still very afraid, not just for themselves, but also for family members that they may have left behind.
“So the story of the illegal police stations really put in the spotlight the intimidation that many people feel when they move here.”
It followed claims by human rights NGO Safeguard Defenders that the Chinese regime had set up undeclared police offices in three UK locations.
Two were reported in London, in Hendon and Croydon, and one in Glasgow, with the group stating the stations were intended to harass political dissidents.
Tugendhat told MPs that the government was assessing the reports as well as other actions by Chinese officials that are “incompatible with diplomatic status.”
The beating of protester Bob Chan last year was also a defining moment for UK-based Hongkongers, Sabah said.
“The British government did nothing,” the CFHK director said. “They summoned in London a political officer to come and talk to them, not the ambassador, not even the deputy ambassador. Some third ranking official was summoned to the Foreign Office.”
Sabah also criticised the government for failing to expel the consul-general and other Chinese diplomats who were involved in the incident.
Fears for Hong Kong Family
The Hong Kong exodus to the UK is owing to a controversial security law that Beijing imposed on the former British colony in June 2020.The law inhibits free speech and the right to protest with punishments that include up to life in prison.
Jim Wong, a 31-year-old Hong Kong activist narrowly escaped that fate.
He was arrested after being badly beaten by Hong Kong police during a 2019 protest.
Wong initially faced one charge following the 2019 incident. However, within months, police trumped up the allegations against him and charged him with a further seven offences.
He felt he had no choice but to seek asylum in the UK.
Wong left Hong Kong in 2020 and arrived in Britain in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, with very little English.
He travelled alone, unable to tell his family that he was leaving, for fear the Chinese authorities would accuse them of conspiring with a “criminal.”
Since then, his family have been intimidated in Hong Kong. Wong said there was evidence that CCP agents had turned up outside their apartment blocks.
His name and address have also appeared on pro-CCP websites.
“I feel unsafe in the UK,” Wong told The Epoch Times. “And sometimes feel my family is unsafe in Hong Kong.
“If I want to make contact with people who are in Hong Kong, I have to be very careful.
“The police could accuse families of protesters of assisting a criminal if they transfer some money or if they buy them a ticket to somewhere. It is really stressful.”
Wong now helps other Hongkongers integrate in Britain, connecting new arrivals with locals to help them settle.
He said he has been helping new arrivals become volunteers at food banks to “spread love” to other refugees.
Framed as a Traitor
It is not just young political activists who have had to seek refuge in the UK.In 2020, Professor Hans Yeung had been at the top of his career at the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority (HKDSE) where he had worked for 15 years.
Writing secondary school history examination papers had been an integral part of his senior education role.
The 51-year-old was forced to resign after including a question that asked whether students agreed with the statement “Japan did more good than harm to China in the period 1900–45.”
The question was scrapped and Yeung was forced from his job.
It didn’t end there, though. In multiple pro-CCP newspapers, Yeung was hounded and framed as a national traitor.
One headline read, “HKDSE exam chief suspected of distorting historical facts to spread ‘HK independence.’”
Another read, “Question setter suspected of inciting violence.”
“Anyone who appears in their headlines in a negative way actually have to leave, because this means that all of us are already in the fire of the Chinese government,” Yeung told The Epoch Times.
“So sooner or later they will come back after us.
“It is better for us to leave the city as soon as possible, especially in the year 2020.
“Because we all know that from the first of August of that year, the immigration have the rights to decline exits of every citizen without any reason.”
Yeung travelled to the UK, where he has remained since. He accepts he may never return to Hong Kong, where he lived for over 50 years.
“If I consent to the rule of fear, refrain from saying anything, there will be no fear, but actually this is already a kind of fear.
“I still wanted to speak my mind to its very truth. So if I want to do that, I have to leave my home, my hometown.
“Otherwise, I would have been arrested under the National Security Law.”
Sabah said Hongkongers don’t need to have been directly impacted by Beijing’s long arm of intimidation and harassment to feel afraid.
He said that, following Bob Chan’s assault, many Hongkongers immediately told him: “We’re going to stop talking. That’s it. I’m not going to any more protests.
“I’m not going to any more demonstrations. I’m not speaking to any more journalists, I’m not going go to Parliament to meet MPs.”
Sabah said: “Within days, dozens of those messages came through to me. So despite months and months of careful cultivation of relationships to build trust, it all collapsed.”
Sabah said the ongoing persecution of Hongkongers in the UK is mostly down to a lack of action from the British government.
“You had [former Prime Minister] Liz Truss, who was incredibly tough on China and wanted to call China a strategic threat.
“You’ve got [Prime Minister] Rishi Sunak travelling around the world, saying they’re a competitor, which is a big difference.
“I mean, France is a competitor, Sweden is a competitor. China is not just the competitor.
“China genuinely threatens not just migrants to this country, but actually national security.
“If they’re supplying cameras, if they’re supplying software, if they’re stealing technology, or if they’re selling university research through student exchanges.
“It’s an issue of national security, and this government is completely unwilling to do anything about it.”
