Democracy activist Agnes Chow, now in Canada, won’t return to face trial in Hong Kong

One of Hong Kong’s best-known pro-democracy activists, who moved to Canada to pursue her studies, said she would not return to the city to meet her bail conditions, becoming the latest politician to flee Hong Kong under Beijing’s crackdown on dissidents.

Agnes Chow, a famous young face in the city’s once-vibrant pro-democracy movement, was arrested in 2020 under a Beijing-imposed national security law that was enacted following anti-government protests in 2019. She was released on bail but served more than six months in jail in a separate case over her role in the protests.

After Chow was released from prison in 2021, she had to regularly report to the police. She said in an Instagram post on Sunday night — her first public comments since her release — that the pressure caused her “mental illnesses” and influenced her decision not to return to the city.

“I made the decision because I want to live freely,” Chow said in an interview with CBC News Network on Monday.

“There is a term, ‘freedom from fear.’ From my experience in the past three years, I really understand what [that term] is.”

Many of her peers have been jailed, arrested, forced into self-exile or silenced after the introduction of the security law in 2020.

Freedoms drastically eroded

The suppression of the city’s pro-democracy movement highlights how freedoms promised to the former British colony when it returned to China in 1997 have been drastically eroded. Both Beijing and Hong Kong governments have hailed the security law for bringing back stability to the semi-autonomous Chinese city.

Chow said the authorities in July offered to return her passport so she could pursue studies in Toronto under the condition that she travel to mainland China with them. She agreed, she said, and her trip in August included a visit to an exhibition on China’s achievements and the headquarters of tech giant Tencent. The authorities later returned her passport.

After considering the situation in Hong Kong, her safety and her health, Chow said she “probably won’t return” to the city because staying there felt scarier than the idea of never going back home.

“I would say the most fearful thing for me would be the last three years when I was in Hong Kong,” she said.

She woke up every morning wondering “whether the police would be coming to break my door, to arrest me, to confiscate again my phone, my computer, my passport.”

She added: “It was really a horrible experience that I won’t forget — and I don’t want to be forced to go to China again.”

Chow told TV Tokyo on Monday that she was still weighing her next steps, including the option of seeking asylum in Canada.

Asked whether she would take up political activism there, she said she wanted to do something in Hong Kong’s interest, TV Tokyo said.

Hong Kong police on Monday “strongly condemned” Chow’s move, without naming her, saying it was “against and challenging the rule of law.”

“Police urge the woman to immediately turn back before it is too late and not to choose a path of no return. Otherwise, she will bear the stigma of ‘fugitive’ for the rest of her life,” the police said in a statement.

Hong Kong condemns Chow

The police did not respond to questions from The Associated Press on Chow’s mainland China trip.

Asked about Chow’s case at a daily briefing, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said Hong Kong is a law-based society and no one has a privilege beyond law. Any illegal acts will be punished, he said.

The Hong Kong government also strongly condemned Chow’s acts in a statement and said her credibility had gone “bankrupt.”

“Unless fugitives surrender themselves, otherwise they would be pursued for life,” it wrote.

Chow rose to fame with other prominent young activists Joshua Wong and Nathan Law as a student leader, including in pro-democracy protests in 2014.

She co-founded the now-defunct pro-democracy party Demosisto with Wong and Law, but the party was disbanded on June 30, 2020, the same day the security law was enacted.

Wong is now in custody and faces a subversion charge that could result in life imprisonment if he is convicted. Law fled to Britain and Hong Kong police in July offered a reward of 1 million Hong Kong dollars ($172,600 Cdn) for information leading to his arrest.