<
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/28/revealed-online-campaign-urged-far-right-to-attack-chinas-opponents-in-uk>
"One morning last August, a troubling message appeared in a social media group
for Hongkongers in the UK. It was already a tense time to be an immigrant.
Rioters, propelled by false claims online that the man who had murdered
children in Southport was an asylum seeker, were descending on hotels housing
refugees, trying to burn them alive.
The message alerted the Hongkongers to posts on far-right channels suggesting
some new targets. “They all help refugees who come to the UK to take
resources,” one of them read.
When Finn Lau saw the message he felt a pulse of dread. Not only was his name
on the list of targets but so were two addresses where he had recently lived.
In the London office where he works as a chartered surveyor, Lau stared at the
posts. They looked like just more examples of the flood of hatred that poured
through social media during the riots. But Lau believed this was something more
sinister.
Lau, now 31, was among the activists whose role leading Hong Kong’s democracy
movement catapulted them into confrontation with China’s authoritarian rulers.
Many have fled into exile in the UK, where they continue to campaign. Educated,
organised and articulate, they rank among the dissidents Beijing is most
determined to crush.
Lau and his fellow activists have been called traitors, with bounties on their
heads that are three times what the authorities offer for murderers. Relatives
back home have been arrested and intimidated. As he read the posts, Lau
suspected a chilling new tactic: an attempt to harness far-right violence.
Working with the anti-racism group Hope Not Hate, the
Guardian found more
than 150 posts from 29 accounts on three days in August 2024 that sought to
draw the attention of anti-immigrant groups and the far right to Lau and other
Hong Kong exiles. Cybersecurity experts who have reviewed the posts say they
exhibited some similarities to a major online influence operation that a
Chinese security agency is suspected of orchestrating."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
