HONG KONG: A group of Hong Kong families on Saturday demanded the urgent return of their activist relatives detained last month by mainland Chinese authorities as they tried to flee the city by boat to Taiwan.
Relatives of six of the 12 detained activists donned masks and hats to shield their identities as they made their first public appeal for help and information on their plight, supported by several local pro-democracy politicians.
Some sobbed and wept as they issued several demands, including that those detained be allowed to consult lawyers appointed by the families and not the Chinese government and should be allowed to call their relatives in Hong Kong.
“I can’t imagine what’s the worst case scenario,” said a woman surnamed Li, whose son Li Tsz-yin, 29, is among those being held in a detention center in the southern city of Shenzhen.
They said they still had no information on the charges faced by their relatives, and the Hong Kong government had given no concrete assistance. A boy aged 16 is the youngest being held.
The Chinese Coast Guard Bureau said in a post on its social media site on Aug. 27 that it had arrested at least 10 people on Aug. 23 after intercepting a boat off the coast of the southern province of Guangdong.
Hong Kong media, citing unidentified sources, said the 12 were headed to Taiwan to apply for political asylum. Their arrests come as local activists and politicians fear a worsening clamp-down across the former British colony as a sweeping new national security law imposed by Beijing in July takes full effect.
Hours before the families’ appearance, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the United States was deeply concerned about the activists, saying they had been denied to access to lawyers and local authorities had not provided any information on their welfare or the charges against them.
Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam said earlier this week that if they had been arrested for breaking mainland law “then they have to dealt with according to the mainland laws.”
Families of captured Hong Kong activists demand their return from Chinese detention
https://arab.news/6vhwn
Families of captured Hong Kong activists demand their return from Chinese detention
- Relatives donned masks and hats to shield their identities
- Hong Kong media, citing unidentified sources, said the 12 were headed to Taiwan to apply for political asylum
Neighbors of alleged Bondi gunmen shocked by deadly rampage
SYDNEY: Like many people in Sydney, Glenn Nelson spent his Sunday evening watching television coverage of a deadly shooting on the city’s iconic Bondi Beach.
But stepping onto his front porch, flanked by neatly trimmed box hedges, he saw armed police cordoning off the street before raiding the house opposite — home of the two suspects who are alleged to have killed 15 people in Australia’s worst mass shooting in decades.
“I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll catch the rest in the morning,’ the next thing, the drama is out the front door,” he said in an interview on Monday, shortly after mowing his lawn.
Nelson and other neighbors said the family living across the street kept to themselves, but seemed like any other in the suburb of Bonnyrigg, a working-class, well-kept enclave with an ethnically diverse population around 36 km (22 miles) by road from Sydney’s central business district.
Local media named the two suspected gunmen as father and son Sajid and Naveed Akram.
Police have not named the suspects, but they said the older man, 50, was killed at the scene, taking the number of dead to 16, while his 24-year-old son was in a critical condition in hospital.
Police said the son was known to authorities and the father had a firearms license.
The Sydney Morning Herald spoke to a woman on Sunday evening who identified herself as the wife and mother of the suspects.
She said the two men had told her they were going on a fishing trip before heading to Bondi and opening fire on an event celebrating the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.
“I always see the man and the woman and the son,” said 66-year-old Lemanatua Fatu, who lives across the street.
“They are normal people.”
Until Sunday’s shooting, Bonnyrigg was an otherwise unremarkable neighborhood typical of Sydney’s sprawling Western suburbs.
It has significant Vietnamese and Chinese communities, along with many residents who were born in Iraq, Cambodia and Laos, according to government data.
The town center, a strip mall with a large adjoining car park, is flanked by a mosque, a Buddhist temple and several churches.
“It’s a quiet area, very quiet,” Fatu said. “And people mind their own business, doing their own thing — until now.”
Not much is currently known about the suspects’ backgrounds.
A Facebook post from an Arabic and Qur'an studies institute appearing to show one of the men was removed on Monday and no one answered the door at an address listed for it in the neighboring suburb of Heckenberg.
On Monday afternoon, as police took down their cordon, several people re-entered the house, covering their faces. They made no comment to the media and did not answer the door.
