Police in Hong Kong have questioned the father of an activist based in Canada with a $35,000 bounty on his head, according to local media.

Alan Keung, a Christian pastor and founder of the online publication Free HK Media, was jailed in Hong Kong on sedition charges in March, 2023, over a book he and two others sold at an independent literary fair. After his release, Mr. Keung relocated to Canada, where he has been involved in efforts to form a “parliament in exile” made up of pro-democracy activists from the Chinese territory.

Dressed in a clerical collar and protective gear, Mr. Keung was a common sight at pro-democracy protests in 2019. He worked as a volunteer medic as demonstrators clashed with police during months of increasingly violent unrest, which ended in July, 2020, with the passage of a draconian national security law that has since been used to stamp out essentially all opposition in Hong Kong.

[…]

In addition, numerous Hong Kong-based relatives and associates of bounty targets have been brought in for questioning by police in recent months.

The rewards, which have little chance of leading to arrests given that most targets live in countries without extradition treaties with Hong Kong, have sparked widespread condemnation of the territory’s government, hampering ongoing efforts to reform Hong Kong’s image and promote a return of foreign business and tourism.

[…]

Last week, the G7, along with the European Union and several other countries, issued another statement warning that bounties placed on Hong Kongers for “exercising their freedom of expression” were an act of transnational repression that “undermines national security, state sovereignty, human rights, and the safety of communities.”

[…]