HK protest group under probe for flouting law

HONG KONG: The police chief has revealed that they are looking into possible violations of the National Security Law by the Civil Human Rights Front, a prominent organiser of an array of illegal assemblies amid the city’s 2019 social unrest, while the alliance is contemplating folding.

“We have been collecting relevant evidence and will take action against the alliance at any time,” police commissioner Raymond Siu Chak-yee said in an interview with Hong Kong-based Chinese language newspaper Ta Kung Pao.

The information came after some local media earlier reported that Civil Human Rights Front discussed its disbandment on Friday.

The alliance, established in 2002 and comprising dozens of member groups, had been a major organiser of public rallies.

Some of the unauthorised rallies that it organised in 2019 turned into riots with rampant violence and vandalism.

Some of its member groups, including the recently disbanded Hong Kong Professional Teachers’ Union, the city’s former largest teachers’ organisation, announced their withdrawal from the alliance earlier this year.

Facing the concern that the alliance’s criminal evidence would be destroyed after its disbandment, Siu said the police had already deployed manpower to collect evidence in advance.

“Anyone who breaks the law had better not think they can make their getaway,” he warned.

Some leaders of the alliance had been imprisoned for their roles in the city’s illegal assemblies, but the police would not rule out the possibility of going after its key members, Siu added.

“Stepping down from their roles will not absolve them of their crimes,” he stressed, pledging the police’s determination to get to the bottom of the cases.