United Kingdom

Archived

[...]

Working with the anti-racism group Hope Not Hate, the Guardian found more than 150 posts from 29 accounts on three days in August 2024 that sought to draw the attention of anti-immigrant groups and the far right to [exiled dissident Finn] Lau and other Hong Kong exiles. Cybersecurity experts who have reviewed the posts say they exhibited some similarities to a major online influence operation that a Chinese security agency is suspected of orchestrating.

[...]

Lau and his fellow activists have been called traitors, with bounties on their heads that are three times what the authorities offer for murderers. Relatives back home have been arrested and intimidated. As he read the posts, Lau suspected a chilling new tactic: an attempt to harness far-right violence.

[...]

Posts on X inciting attacks on Lau and others were directed at far-right figures, including Tommy Robinson. “They’re even supporting the Muslim minorities too!” read one post denouncing Hongkongers, sent to the Reform UK MP Richard Tice. It gave the date and location of a planned gathering of Hongkongers a few days later. Posts on Telegram appeared in the channels of the leaders of the white nationalist group Patriotic Alternative.

Online incitement appears to represent a novel weapon in the arsenal that projects Beijing’s power. Lau is one of the opponents of the regime – Hongkongers as well as Tibetans, Uyghurs, Taiwanese and campaigners for democracy – subjected to what the US-based advocacy group Freedom House calls “the most sophisticated, global and comprehensive campaign of transnational repression in the world”. [...]