'I keep looking round' Online posts urged far right to attack China's opponents in UK

One morning last August, a troubling message appeared in a social media group for Hongkongers in the UK.

- Tom Burgis Maeve McClenaghan

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 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 and organised, 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.