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Australian lawyer and China bounty target Kevin Yam still believes it is important to pursue diplomacy with Beijing

An Australian citizen who the Hong Kong authorities have vowed to “pursue for life” has risked further ire from Beijing by calling on the Australian government to consider future sanctions against Chinese officials.

Kevin Yam, one of eight overseas-based pro-democracy advocates accused of “encouraging sanctions … to destroy Hong Kong”, said the city’s descent into increasingly repressive rule had been “gut-wrenching”.

In his most extensive interview since arrest warrants and “bounties” were announced last month, the Melbourne-based lawyer also expressed concern for two other Australian citizens detained in China.

Yam grew up in Melbourne from the age of 10 and studied commerce and law at university. Afterwards, he moved back to Hong Kong and practised as a solicitor. He became involved in Hong Kong civil society, becoming a rule of law, judicial independence and democracy activist after 2014.

He initially dropped out of activism activities around 2018, but became a spokesperson during the 2019 protests.

Yam said he “stopped all my activities” when the harsh new national security law was imposed by Beijing in 2020.

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After moving back to Australia in 2022, Yam found his voice again. He said so many of his Hong Kong friends had been jailed or silenced that he felt he “had a duty living in a free country to speak up for a city that really gave me a career and gave me everything”.

He said “I think the things that presumably got me into quote unquote trouble with Hong Kong are: a mixture of meetings with Australian MPs talking about Hong Kong; meeting with the foreign minister, Penny Wong, talking about Hong Kong; and probably most importantly from China’s perspective, having testified before the US Congress by video link while I’m in Australia about Hong Kong.”

Hong Kong authorities claimed the three-year-old national security law could apply to subversive activities undertaken anywhere in the world, but Yam believed they have been selective in issuing arrest warrants.

“The things that they accused me of are all things that I’ve done whilst being an Australian citizen … but they’re claiming that they’ve got universal jurisdiction,” Yam said in an interview with the ANU’s national security podcast, released on Thursday.

“It shows an ugly ethno-nationalist side to China as well.

“There are all sorts of NGOs and thinktanks and the like where there are white guys that have spoken out much more vociferously than any of us have,” he said.

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“But China doesn’t go after them. They go after us. They think that just because we are ethnically Chinese, they own us.”

The arrest warrants – which also included a second Australian resident, Ted Hui, who fled Hong Kong via Europe in 2021 – have added a new point of tension in an already challenging diplomatic relationship with China. Hong Kong police are offering rewards of HK$1m (A$191,000) for information leading to their arrest.

Wong responded by saying Australia was gravely concerned and would protect freedom of speech. China’s foreign ministry retorted that western countries should “stop lending support for anti-China elements destabilising Hong Kong and stop providing a safe haven for fugitives”.

Yam said while it “might sound unusual coming from me given my current situation”, he believed it was important that the Australian government kept pursuing diplomacy with Beijing.

He said that while there was no political appetite in Australia to impose immediate sanctions against Hong Kong or Chinese officials on human rights grounds, the government should be ready to act in future. Yam said the government should investigate officials’ connections to Australia “in terms of family, in terms of assets, so we make sure that if one day the political and the global environment changes that we would be imposing targeted and effective sanctions”.

“It would be rich of me, sitting in a free country now, being well-supported and protected by both government and friends, to say that all engagement should cease when we’ve still got Cheng Lei and Yang Hengjun stuck in China in prison.”