Hong Kong activist flees to Canada

HONG KONG — Agnes Chow, a prominent pro-democracy activist in Hong Kong who was arrested as part of a sweeping crackdown, said over the weekend that she had fled to Canada and planned to skip bail, in a bold challenge to authorities.

Chow had been arrested in 2020, along with several other dissidents, including newspaper mogul Jimmy Lai, after Beijing imposed a national security law on Hong Kong to curb dissent. Authorities were investigating Chow on suspicion of collusion with external elements, a vaguely defined political crime that carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. She was later released on bail.

Chow wrote in an Instagram post Sunday that she had traveled to Canada in September to study at a university. She said she had decided not to return to Hong Kong in December to report to police, as authorities had requested. “Perhaps I will never go back again in my lifetime,” she wrote.

Hong Kong’s national security police condemned her expressed intention to “jump bail” and urged her to “immediately turn back.” In a statement Monday, the Hong Kong government said that it would “spare no effort” in bringing Chow to justice and warned that she could not “evade legal liabilities by absconding.”

Chow, 27, rose to prominence as a teenage activist in 2012 protesting government plans to introduce “patriotic education” in Hong Kong’s schools, alongside Joshua Wong. She later became one of the more prominent young leaders of the pro-democracy movement in 2014.

In 2020, she was imprisoned for her role in a protest outside the police headquarters during a wave of anti-government demonstrations the previous summer; she was released early after serving nearly seven months.