Former pro-democracy lawmaker Ted Hui Chi-fung appears outside West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts in Hong Kong on Nov. 19, 2020. Lam Yik/Reuters
Australia’s granting asylum to former Hong Kong legislator Ted Hui is a “slap in the face” for the Hong Kong authorities, said a Sydney attorney and documentary filmmaker.
“The Australian government’s decision to grant Ted Hui a protection visa is a slap in the face for the HK SAR [special administrative region] and its Chief Executive John Lee, who was sanctioned by the first Trump [administration] for serious human rights abuses in Hong Kong,” Mark Tarrant, who represented political activist Drew Pavlou during the anti-extradition bill movement in 2019, told The Epoch Times.
Hui, who is wanted by the Hong Kong authorities, was granted asylum in Australia on Aug. 15.
A high-profile critic of Hong Kong’s controversial National Security Law, which triggered widespread democracy protests in 2019-2020, Hui faces several charges and was the target of a Hong Kong police bounty of HK$1 million (AU$196,000) in 2023.
The National Security Law, passed by Beijing’s rubber-stamp legislature in 2020, received strong criticism for eroding the “one country, two systems” model, which was promised by the Chinese communist regime when Hong Kong was handed over in 1997.
Hui has since pursued a legal career in Adelaide and was admitted to the Supreme Court of South Australia in 2023.
Currently working as a solicitor in Adelaide, Hui made the announcement in a Facebook post, saying that the asylum also extends to his wife, children, and parents.
“I express my sincere gratitude to the government of Australia—both present and former—for recognising our need for asylum and granting us this protection,” he wrote.
“In thanking the government, I also thank the people of Australia, whom it represents. This decision reflects values of freedom, justice, and compassion that my family will never take for granted.”
Hui noted that the protection visa is not something to be taken for granted.
“We tried hard to explain to Australian society why and how we in Hong Kong lost our freedom—why we had to leave a homeland we love and where our most precious memories remain,” he wrote.
“That freedom was not surrendered, but taken by repression, even as we fought to defend it; and in standing for democracy, we were driven into exile.”