By Coconuts Hong Kong December 15, 2014 / 16:29 HKT
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(Disclaimer: The spies were probably not this good-looking.)
Reuters has released an in-depth investigation on “How China spies on Hong Kong’s democrats”, revealing that two men were arrested in August after pro-democracy lawmaker James To, feeling threatened, reported his suspicions of being followed to the police.
For a period of almost a week, To had noticed one of two Mercedes following him as he drove to work from his home in North Point. The car would park near the LegCo building and wait.
On Aug. 11, To reported the two cars to the police, explaining his situation and giving them the cars’ license plates.
The next day, the police intercepted one of the Mercedes. Later they told To that they had arrested two Hong Kong men aged 54 and 56, and seized the two Mercedes in question.
The police had just accidentally thwarted a covert surveillance operation run by Beijing – the first time such an operation has been confirmed, though most Hongkongers would express approximately zero surprise at this news.
The two arrested were promptly released, with the public kept in the dark about the incident, including their names. The police say that the investigation was “curtailed” because they could not find enough evidence of a crime.
One of the license plates was registered to a Hongkonger who claimed ignorance of the spying (“This is all a misunderstanding”, he said to Reuters), while the other was not registered to anyone (Ghost Rider?).
According to “people familiar with the operation” (Other spies? Police?), the two arrested men were part of a larger surveillance team watching the lawmaker.
In fact, there exist multiple teams tasked with spying on important pro-democracy and/or anti-Beijing people, with the aim of finding “compromising information”.
We’ve got some “compromising information” for you, Beijing: did you know that the chief executive’s daughter publicly thanked taxpayersfor her “beautiful shoes and dresses”? Or that he said democracy is no good, because it would help the poor? No? Not interested? Never mind.
Other legislators, activists, academics and even priests have reported cases of being monitored or followed in the past few months.
Such people include democracy poster boy Joshua Wong, who spoke of being followed and photographed while in Taipei, and HKU pollster Robert Chung, who thinks "professional agents" were behind the photos published by a pro-Beijing newspaper, which showed his car taken at different times and locations throughout March.
Apparently mainland intelligence services had been recruiting former Hong Kong police officers with pro-Beijing sentiments and experience with surveillance to join their operations, according to retired senior police officers and managers at private security companies.
The sources say more than 20 such retired officers have been working alongside mainland personnel in surveillance teams, and that the operations have been strengthened over the past year, as the pro-democracy movement grew more vocal.
Under Hong Kong law, China is technically allowed to conduct security and intelligence operations in Hong Kong, but it must be local police acting under the scope of local law who carry out any investigatory or enforcement actions.
http://hongkong.coconuts.co/2014/12/15/spy-another-day-mainland-china-confirmed-be-spying-hong-kong-people-after-two-arrested
