‘You’re still my baby’: Hong Kong mother pleads for son held in mainland China after desperate boat escape
By Shibani Mahtani,
Jerome Favre EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
HONG KONG — Growing up, Li Tsz-yin was typical of the young men in this city, his parents say. He played video games and basketball. He spent his mid-20s in Hong Kong’s cavernous malls and movie theaters. He loved animals, especially his two cats, and the stray cows he would feed in country parks.
Li had his political awakening in 2014, as a participant in the Umbrella Movement. The 79-day street occupation failed in its goal of universal suffrage, but inspired a new generation of Hong Kongers to join the democratic movement.
His contribution was to obtain his first-aid certification and when protests broke out again in June 2019, Li was on the front lines treating the injured and dousing with saline the stinging eyes ravaged by tear gas.
“I think he just loves Hong Kong so much,” his father said, speaking on the condition on anonymity to protect his privacy and security. “He wants to fight for justice and democracy in his home.”
It has been more than 30 days since anyone has heard from or seen Li and the 11 other Hong Kong residents between the ages of 16 and 33. They are being held incommunicado in Shenzhen after the Chinese Coast Guard intercepted their speedboat as they were fleeing to Taiwan.
Hong Kong police in a statement late Saturday said the 12, who have been detained since Aug. 23, are in the custody of the Yantian branch of the Shenzhen Public Security Bureau, which will soon formally arrest them.
[Hong Kong refugees captured at sea spent months plotting daring dash to freedom]
Their arrest under Chinese law would mean that the 12 will be absorbed deeper into the mainland’s legal system, which critics describe as politically influenced, opaque, rife with delays and almost-certain convictions.
With the help of prominent activists in the city, their families are demanding that Hong Kong authorities intervene and seek their return.
“I feel like we are doing all we can, but the Hong Kong government is paying no attention to us, and instead playing us over and over again,” said Li’s mother, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect her privacy and security and who is part of a support group with families of several of the other detainees. “All I can hope for is a miracle, so that my son can immediately be returned to Hong Kong.”
Arrested but undeterred
Li’s parents were watching live streams of an unauthorized protest on Sept. 29 last year, when they saw officers from an elite police unit burst out onto the streets near the legislative council complex and start tackling protesters. In the chaos, they saw their 29-year old son’s face pressed into the ground, staring at the camera.
Vincent Yu
AP
A police officer detains a protester in Hong Kong last year on Sept. 29.
Police were particularly aggressive that day as the sensitive 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China was approaching. Riot police fired round after road of tear gas and rubber bullets and doused protesters with stinging blue-dyed water from cannons.
[Hong Kong police smash anti-China demonstration]
Li’s mother rushed to the police station where he was being held and finally saw him some nine hours after his arrest. His shoulders were bruised, she said, and he had wounds all across his back. Li was later brought to the hospital for an assessment and held there until he was granted bail the next day.
Li, who works as a quantity surveyor supervising construction projects, was initially charged with unlawful assembly, but that was later upgraded to the charge of rioting, which carries a 10-year sentence, along with assaulting a police officer.
Under his bail conditions, Li could not return to the area where he was arrested and had to abide by a curfew. So he stopped taking to the streets, his parents said, afraid that the next arrest would land him in jail, without the prospect of bail. He slipped back into familiar routines, going to work as usual and meeting up with friends. But he had grown quieter, they noticed, less willing to vocalize his demands for democracy and justice in his city.
“But he never thought of giving up,” his father said. “All he has ever wanted to do was support the protesters, and support the movement.”
‘Unbelievable’
On Aug. 12, after attending yet another pretrial audience in his case, Li had an emotional conversation with his mother about the worst-case scenario and the prospect of spending the next 10 years in prison.
“In my eyes, what he did was not at all violent, it was helping people on the front lines,” his mother said, remembering the rolls of gauze, surgical tape, bottles of saline and wound cleaning solution he would pack with him before heading out to protests. “I was hopeful, I thought he was wrong, perhaps he wouldn’t be found guilty or sentenced at all.”
Family photo
Li Tsz-yin’s mother carries with her this photo of him as a child. Li, 29, has been in Chinese detention after trying to flee from Hong Kong to Taiwan.
Several days later, on Aug. 22, Li had dinner with his father as usual. Few words were exchanged before he went to bed. By the time Li’s father woke the next day, about 10 a.m., his son had left the house.
It took a while, though, for his parents — who live apart — to notice anything was amiss. Li had told his father he was spending a few days with his mother.
Six days later, Li’s father went to the nearby police station to file a missing person’s report. Soon after he mentioned his son’s name, the officer told him his son had been detained in the mainland. Even when officers showed up at his home with an official notice confirming the detention, his parents still thought it might not be true.
[Hong Kongers who fled by sea are held without legal access in China, families say]
“I thought it was unbelievable, why would our son want to escape Hong Kong and flee like that?” his mother said.
The Hong Kong police, in their Saturday statement, said Li and the others had left on a speedboat at 7 a.m. from a small fishing village on the Clear Water Bay peninsula. The boat entered mainland waters just half an hour later.
“They planned to flee to Taiwan via mainland marine waters in order to evade criminal responsibility in Hong Kong,” the statement said. Police are also searching for those in Hong Kong that helped organize their departure.
‘Mummy is proud of you’
Within a week, Li’s parents and the other families secured human rights lawyers in mainland China, but their legal representatives have still not been granted access to the detainees. Several have dropped the case after being threatened and warned off it.
Lu Siwei, a Chinese human rights lawyer from Sichuan province representing one of the families, said in a brief interview that he had been warned against speaking to the foreign press.
Hong Kong security chief John Lee in a television interview said the 12 detainees have each chosen two lawyers from a list provided by mainland authorities and insisted that Hong Kong officials cannot intervene. His comments were echoed by the city Chief Executive Carrie Lam, who in a news conference said the 12 have “absconded” and “run away from their legal liabilities,” and in doing so, “committed another crime in another jurisdiction.
“Isn’t it reasonable and fair that these 12 people should first face their legal liabilities in that other jurisdiction according to the law? And thereafter we will arrange for them to come back to face consequences,” she said.
Fazry Ismail
EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
A protester prepares to throw a tear-gas canister at police officers in Hong Kong on Sept. 29, 2019.
Their words have left Li’s parents feeling bitterly disappointed in their government. Lam and the rest should fight for Hong Kong people, they said — and not simply serve as mouthpieces for the mainland authorities.
In her desperation, Li’s mother penned a letter to her son and sent it to immigration officials hoping that it will somehow reach him in detention.
“It’s Mummy, how are you? Mummy misses you so much! When will you come back? Every day since you left I’ve suffered from insomnia. Sometimes I have to scream,” the letter reads. “Please come back soon. I can’t lose you.”
“Since you were small I didn’t have to worry about you, your character was always so selfless and loving. Sometimes I thought you should be more selfish,” she wrote. “You said Hong Kong is already lost, that Hong Kong is over. I know how hard it was for you to choose this path.”
“No matter what the future holds, you’re still my baby,” she added. “Mummy is proud of you. Mummy will always support you.”
Ryan Ho Kilpatrick and Tiffany Liang contributed to this report.
Hong Kong protesters defy national security law, return to streets to oppose election delay
China’s security law sends chill through Hong Kong, 23 years after handover
They fought for freedom in Hong Kong. Now, they must find it in exile.
