Hong Kong dissident Kevin Yam urges Victorian Labor MPs not to take China trip

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An Australian lawyer and Labor Party member with a bounty on his head for criticising the China-led rights crackdown in Hong Kong has urged Andrews government MPs to abandon a planned trip to China, arguing the visit was a “propaganda” tour that insulted his plight.

Kevin Yam, 47, is one of two Australia-based activists accused by Hong Kong police of national security offences, including foreign collusion. Authorities have offered $130,000 for information leading to his arrest and urged Australia to “stop providing a safe haven for fugitives”.

Kevin Yam (right) and Ted Hui, pictured in Canberra, have bounties on their heads.

Yam, who is also a rank and file member of the Australian Labor Party, told this masthead he was disappointed to learn of a 10-day September junket being planned by a group of state Labor MPs who intend to learn about Chinese culture and business.

“You’ll never see the real China on these trips,” he said.

“If you’re talking about a cultural exchange – we all know these sorts of trips are not really about that. It’s about China trying to show a positive side of itself to a bunch of unwitting regional-level Australian MPs.

“And why now? Especially given in my case as an ALP member, I have a bounty over me and MPs are going on what they think is a cultural exchange. But really it is a propaganda trip.

“I certainly hope they would reconsider whether this is the right timing for something like this given an Australian citizen and fellow ALP member has got this over his head.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese sounded the alarm on Wednesday about what he called unacceptable bounties and said he would “continue to co-operate with China where we can, but we will disagree where we must”.

Albanese is in talks to travel to China later this year, a trip that Yam endorsed even after the announcement of his bounty, which was strongly condemned by experts and human rights advocates as an extraordinary extraterritorial overreach.

“I was supportive of the idea of Albanese going there because there are genuine issues, such [journalist] Cheng Lei and [writer] Yang Hengjun, or trade or things where we need to talk business,” Yam said, drawing a distinction between Albanese’s trip and that of the Victorian MPs.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews with MP Will Fowles, who is organising a trip to China.

“I’m not some sort of extremist who says you should never deal with China. We have an important economic and political economic relationship that we’ve got to handle.”

The planned trip for Victorian MPs, organised by state Labor MP Will Fowles, has been criticised by the federal Coalition which, along with two China experts, raised concerns about potential national security and foreign influence implications.

When asked about the trip this week, Fowles said he was organising a study tour and was “continuing to work through the details with the Commonwealth and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade”. He did not answer questions about how he would handle security sensitivities.

“This is not a government trip,” he said.

Yam is a Melbourne-based lawyer who lived in Hong Kong for 20 years and criticised the recent crackdown on civil society and diminution of judicial independence in Hong Kong, before returning to Australia last year.

He was targeted by the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning at a press conference in Beijing on Tuesday night, in which she warned Beijing would “brook no meddling by any external forces”.

“Kevin Yam and the others have long been engaging in anti-China activities aimed at destabilising Hong Kong,” she said.

“After fleeing overseas, they have acted in an even more outrageous way to create trouble and continued to instigate the division of the country and subversion of state power, acting as pawns for external anti-China forces in their effort to interfere in Hong Kong affairs.”

The Hong Kong government said in a statement on Thursday that “national security laws have extraterritorial effects” recognised under international law, and criticism of the bounties amounted to “double standards” and “hypocrisy”.

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