Lam Wing-kee says he feels his personal safety is now under threat. File photo: AP
Causeway Bay bookseller Lam Wing-kee claims police has turned down his request for protection, after he told them he was being followed around.
In an exclusive interview with local newspaper Mingpao on Wednesday, Lam said when he reported that someone was following him on a bike, police dismissed the person as a curious onlooker.
Lam said some people who followed him were showing "triad-style" behaviour and he felt his personal safety was under threat.
On one occasion, he said four men had followed him until he entered a building. He said a shop owner nearby later told him that the men continued their watch outside the building after he went in.
Lam said the people looked like mainlanders and he did not believe they were journalists or the paparazzi.
But the Secretary for Security, Lai Tung-kwok, said later that police who investigated Lam's complaint found that a car that was tailing him belonged to a media organisation.
Democratic Party legislator Albert Ho, who has been helping Lam, urged the police not to arrive at a premature conclusion that only reporters have been following the bookseller.
He said some of those who followed Lam may have been reporters, but the police are not in a position to say all of them were journalists. Ho said Lam told him that some of those who followed him made an effort to make themselves conspicuous to let know they were following him.
In a related development, the state-owned mainland newspaper People’s Daily said Lam’s account about his detention on the mainland were all lies.
In an article published in the newspaper’s overseas edition, it said some people are using Lam’s case to stir up "confrontational sentiments" between Hong Kong people and mainlanders, so as to fuel the movement for Hong Kong's independence.
The article said the Hong Kong police and the public security departments on the mainland will very likely work more closely than before, adding Lam’s plan to escape legal sanction by running away to Hong Kong was doomed to fail.
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Last updated: 2016-07-06 HKT 13:45
http://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1270915-20160706.htm
