Detained by the Chinese Coast Guard as they tried to flee the city, the activists are now in the hands of the mainland’s opaque criminal justice system.
The 12 protesters who were caught fleeing Hong Kong in a speedboat last month have not been allowed to call their families. They have been denied bail and held without charge in a Chinese detention center. They have been barred from meeting rights lawyers appointed by their relatives. Soon, they will face criminal charges related to their escape, and they are expected to do so in the mainland’s murky justice system. In Hong Kong, they have become a potent reminder of the very same deep-seated anxiety that last year triggered large demonstrations and evolved into the most serious challenge to the Communist Party’s rule in decades. The protests targeted a proposed extradition law, since abandoned, that would have exposed the city’s residents to trial on the mainland, where courts are controlled by the party. “This is what we had been fearing when we protested against the extradition bill, that people from Hong Kong could get sent over to China into a totally different system that’s well known for not following their own laws,” said Beatrice Li, the sister of Andy Li, an activist who was one of the people on the boat. Anxiety about Beijing’s tightening grip over Hong Kong has only intensified since the Communist Party imposed a sweeping national security law on the territory in June, to punish vaguely defined political crimes such as subversion. Mr. Li had been arrested in August under the new law, and released on bail. As many as 200 Hong Kong protesters are believed to have fled to Taiwan, where the activists are believed to have been headed, over the past year. Going there by sea has become increasingly risky, and smugglers who once plied the route are now unwilling to participate, so some members of the group — 11 men and one woman — had learned to pilot a boat themselves, according to two people who had heard details of their attempted escape but were not directly involved. Another protester, Liu Tsz-man, a 17-year-old who was arrested by the police in Hong Kong over an arson conspiracy charge last year, never told his family that he planned to flee. But looking back, there were signs. A few days before he went missing, Mr. Liu had been an unusually good son, according to his brother. The teenager had gone out early in the morning to wait in line for a table at a breakfast dim sum place, a task that usually fell to their father. He also went out of his way to buy cigarettes for his dad. Then, suddenly, he was nowhere to be found. The group set off early on Aug.23 from Po Toi O, a fishing village in a rural part of the territory’s northeast, the Hong Kong government said in a statement Saturday, describing information conveyed by the mainland police.
