Anna Kwok Fung-yee is on the Hong Kong Police Force's Wanted Persons list. Photo taken by Oiwan Lam.

Kwok Yin-sang, 68, father of Anna Kwok Fung Yee, an exiled activist wanted by Hong Kong police with a HKD 1 million bounty, was arrested on April 30, denied bail, and charged with “attempting to deal with, directly or indirectly, any funds or other financial assets or economic resources belonging to, or owned or controlled by, a relevant absconder,” under Article 23, the city's domestic security law. The maximum penalty for the offence is seven years’ imprisonment. 

Prosecutors shared during the High Court bail appeal hearing on May 2 that the arrest took place after AIA, a Hong Kong insurance company, notified the police that Kwok Yin-sang had attempted to change an education savings plan he had bought and been contributing to, of which Anna Kwok was also a beneficiary. While he is the plan's primary policyholder, prosecutors interpreted the act as an attempt to circumvent the financial freeze on his daughter's accounts and divert funds to her. 

The judge, Alex Lee, overrode the magistrate’s decision and granted bail on condition of HKD 200,000 in cash and another HKD 200,000 in surety from his son. The activist’s father must also surrender his travel documents, report to the police every day, stay at his reported residence, and avoid contact with prosecution witnesses and Anna Kwok. 

Collective punishment

Since Hong Kong national security police announced arrest warrants for exiled activists beginning in July 2023, relatives of these wanted individuals have become subjects of police interrogations in the name of investigations. Overseas human rights organisations condemned the move and accused Hong Kong officials of turning the activists’ loved ones back home into hostages so as to silence them. They added that the strategy is directly from China’s transnational repression playbook.

Currently, there are 19 wanted persons involved in national security cases, each with a HKD 1 million bounty. Since the passage of Article 23 in March 2024, the Secretary of Security, Chris Tang, has denounced 13 of the wanted activists as “absconders.” The legal label will prohibit any individual from having financial exchanges and dealings with them. Anna Kwok, the executive director of the Hong Kong Democracy Council, is one of the “absconders.” 

Kwok was not in Hong Kong during the 2019 anti-China extradition protests, but she was involved in the “Stand With Hong Kong” publicity campaign urging global leaders to express their support for the democratic protests at the G20 Summit. 

Kwok Yin-sang's prosecution has shocked overseas Hong Kong communities, as he was the first relative of a wanted activist charged under the security law. Yalkun Uluyol, a researcher from Human Rights Watch, highlighted the nature of “collective punishment” in the case:

HRW @YalkunUluyol: “The Chinese government has increased its appalling use of collective punishment against family members of peaceful activists from Hong Kong. The Hong Kong authorities should immediately and unconditionally release Anna Kwok’s father and cease harassing… pic.twitter.com/PRzmfZMq5P

— 人权观察 HRW Chinese (@hrw_chinese) May 9, 2025

In China's imperial era, when an individual committed a crime, the Emperor could punish the entire family clan to warn and threaten others. 

Reporting suspicious transactions to the police

While human rights activists were despondent about the arrest, pro-Beijing influencers cheered the security police’s heavy-handed measure. For example, Andy Boreham depicted Anna Kwok as a desperate HK separatist who was broken by US President Donald Trump’s funding cuts and hence had her father and brother “secretly wire her funds” to the US. 

Such claims have been debunked by the details revealed in the High Court hearing. The defender’s lawyer told the court that Kwok Yin-sang always considered the education savings plan his own property, as he had made contributions for 21 years until 2020. He merely wanted to change the policy in order to withdraw the insured value, which is worth about HKD 90,000, back to his personal bank account.  

The lawyer also stressed that Anna Kwok had left Hong Kong to study in the US in 2014 and did not sign up to become the plan's policyholder when she reached 18 in 2015. The prosecutor also admitted to the judge that there hadn’t been any financial transactions between the father and daughter for the past few years.

Many online were outraged that Anna Kwok’s father is facing a seven-year imprisonment charge for attempting to change his savings plan, and many lashed out against the insurance company that reported Kwok Yin-sang, AIA. Chung Kim-wah, who is one of the 19 overseas persons wanted with a bounty, wrote a Facebook post urging people to boycott AIA:

呼籲大家以後不要再幫襯 AIA! 一位曾為子女未來作籌劃的父親，只是申請把自己供款的保單改名。處理有困難，向當事人說明就是！但AIA竟然向國安警舉報！效果是讓暴權政府有藉口玩株連，三個星期拘禁，還面對無理狀告！

I urge you not to buy from AIA in the future! A father who had been planning for his children's future simply applied to change the name of the insured in the policy he had contributed to. Even if they found it difficult to process the request, they could have explained the restriction. But AIA went so far as to report it to the National Security Police! The effect of this is to give the tyrannical government an excuse for collective punishment [of families]. [Kwok] was detained for three weeks and is still facing an unreasonable charge!

Many echoed Chung’s comment, asking why the insurance company didn't just freeze the account but instead let the father step into the national security trap. 

Since the enactment of Beijing-imposed National Security Law on June 30, 2020, financial institutions have been told to file suspicious transaction reports for dealings that may be violating the national security law to the Joint Financial Intelligence Unit, an investigative division of the Police Force and the Customs and Excise Department.

The case of Anna Kwok's father seems to suggest that the scope of the security reportage mechanism may be more extensive than people have anticipated. 

Kwok Yin-sang will next appear in court on June 13.