Pro-democracy activist who fled Hong Kong in fear of Beijing’s brutal regime asks: ‘Why is Starmer kowtowing to a dictator whose goons sent fake porn pics of me to my neighbours in Berkshire?’

The five black and white pictures are very strange. A young Asian woman is photographed in various sexual poses, sometimes naked, sometimes wearing cheap lacy underwear. In one of them, she performs oral sex on a man whose face you cannot see. It’s pixelated but there’s no mistaking what it is.

‘Welcome to visit me!’ says a title in broken English. Another box contains bust, waist and hip measurements. She openly advertises her services as a prostitute.

Today, the 30-year-old woman in the photos is sitting right in front of me, looking very different. She’s dressed warmly against the December cold, wearing fluffy Ugg boots and a sad, defensive expression on her face.

She is pro-democracy activist Carmen Lau, who fled Hong Kong four years ago to seek refuge in the United Kingdom. He hoped to find refuge here. Instead, the state-sanctioned Chinese persecution that forced him from his home crossed continents to Berkshire.

The pictures are fake produced by artificial intelligence. Created to tarnish her reputation and compromise her personal safety, these letters were mailed directly to Carmen’s neighbors from the semi-autonomous Chinese region of Macau.

‘No one should be subjected to this type of sexual violence,’ he says. ‘I feel angry, I feel betrayed, I feel terrified. People who know me understand that it’s not me in those pictures, but what about the people who don’t understand? And who knows how widespread these images have become and how much they have been shared on the internet.’

While Carmen was in Berlin for a political event, MP Joshua Reynolds telephoned to report that half a dozen constituents had received pornographic images from her.

‘I need to warn you before I send them away…’ he said, so I was prepared. But when I opened the file I was still shocked because they looked so realistic. What makes me angry the most is that I have no idea how to hold these people accountable for what they’ve done, how to get justice.’

British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer during a bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. British Prime Minister is said to be heading to China for a diplomatic visit next month

Sadly, last month’s attack is the latest salvo in China’s transnational harassment campaign against Carmen and other UK-based dissidents that Chinese police and Number 10 have failed to stop.

Earlier this year, ‘Wanted’ posters were also mailed directly to neighbors offering a reward of one million Hong Kong dollars (about £95,000) to Britons who provided information about Carmen or dragged her to the Chinese Embassy in London. He also suspects he was followed and monitored while working in the UK.

What about his ‘crime’? Carmen has been accused of ‘inciting secession and colluding with a foreign country or external elements to endanger national security’ since her time as an elected councilor in Hong Kong; He does not even bother to deny these accusations because they are ‘fabricated and unfair’.

The campaign of harassment against him raises two serious questions for the UK. First, how can Sir Keir Starmer make friends with Beijing when he visits China next month, as expected? Secondly, why is the government prepared to allow China to build a mega embassy in London, with the associated increased threat of espionage and sabotage on British soil?

Personally, Carmen Lau could not have looked less like an enemy of the state. He was small and thin in faded jeans, his dark hair framing his face. He speaks quietly and earnestly, without exaggeration or self-pity, despite being effectively trapped in a country that may be familiar but is not his home.

Unfortunately, he has no idea when or if he will be able to return to Hong Kong, where he worked as an aide to a pro-democracy politician and then successfully ran for local elections.

Since Hong Kong has only one level of government below the legislature, being a councilor put him in a position of real power. The victory angered Beijing, which has been cracking down on democracy in the former British colony since 2019.

Soon Carmen realized that her office in Kowloon was being watched and photographs of colleagues and visitors were being taken. In early 2021, a Beijing-run newspaper published a front-page story accusing him of conspiring against the Chinese government. Rumors began to circulate that councilors like him were on a list of those to be arrested and that £20,000 of public funds, the cost of running his office, had been withheld.

Carmen is accused of ‘inciting secession and colluding with a foreign country or external elements in a way that endangers national security’

When a white Toyota SUV, the type favored by China’s security services, followed her home in Hong Kong with an agent filming from behind darkened windows, Carmen realized her family was also being targeted.

‘Until then we were all living in fear,’ he says. ‘They were taking people out of their beds at 5am, when they were at their most vulnerable.

‘The sight of that Toyota made me paranoid that I might be kidnapped off the street. ‘I knew my work would have consequences that could result in my arrest, but this was the first time they scared me for the sake of my family.’

Fearing for her safety and also believing that she could do more to help Hong Kong as a free exile, Carmen fled in July of the same year, buying a return ticket to London to avoid suspicion at the border.

‘I didn’t say goodbye to anyone,’ he recalls. By September, she publicly announced that she had relocated to the UK, prompting online harassment from bots and trolls in Beijing.

‘There were death threats, rape threats, I was called the C-word, I was told I served white men or the CIA.’ Some screenshots show: ‘A bitch like you will be raped and killed by anti-China [sic] ‘You will become useless in the West,’ reads one.

As a result, Carmen has strict security measures in place, with CCTV outside her temporary accommodation and motion sensors inside. Google has upgraded its electronic security following official warnings about repeated state-sanctioned hacking attacks.

It uses fake names for online services like Amazon and Uber, has clunky phones and persistent VPN software that hides the user’s origins and bypasses geo-restrictions on websites.

Carmen maintains strict security measures, with CCTV outside her temporary accommodation and motion sensors inside

When traveling abroad, he is careful not to fly through Chinese airspace or land in a country that has an extradition treaty with Beijing.

But China was not deterred; He repeatedly abused her in open defiance of diplomatic customs, British sovereignty and the rule of law of the United Kingdom.

The attacks escalated further in December last year when Hong Kong police issued a warrant for Carmen’s arrest, along with a reward of one million Hong Kong dollars. It was March when the ‘Wanted’ posters were sent to the UK, followed by the devastating fake porn attack last month.

It is hardly surprising, then, that the British government is angry at the prospect of President Xi Jinping and his thawing of relations with Beijing, and deeply alarmed by No 10’s naivety regarding China’s new mega-embassy, ​​which looks set to receive planning permission next year. ‘Prioritizing economic interests in this way [over human rights]”This rapprochement with China signals to whoever is there that they can move freely in the UK,” he said.

‘Such friendship between Keir Starmer’s government and Beijing will open up new avenues for the growth of repression on British soil.

‘Seeing China as an economic partner is an illusion. The Starmer government may think they are really good at handling the relationship with China, calling China a threat to the UK and at the same time shaking hands with China for trade deals; But it doesn’t work that way because you will never win when it comes to China. Starmer is deluded.’

As for the new embassy planned in the former Royal Mint next to the Tower of London, he is equally appalled. Every step of the decision is wrong; It’s diplomatically wrong, historically wrong, and security-wise wrong. The UK is a democracy, but China is not. Why allow an autocracy to take over this outpost, especially in a historical area?

‘This is a castle, the footprint of a rival state in the British capital; Not to mention the fact that the Chinese blurred their plans for some rooms. ‘When you look at the history of terrorist regimes, you can see that they are very good at torture and interrogation.’

Carmen doesn’t need to point out that a suite of secret basement rooms in the country’s London embassy is a terrifying prospect for someone China views as a hostile actor. And unfortunately his belief that the British police can protect him is limited.

Leading up to the distribution of the pornographic images, Thames Valley Police’s response had been to publicly ask him to stop provoking China.

It’s little surprise, then, that Carmen is angered by the prospect of the British government thawing relations with President Xi Jinping (pictured)

‘They gave me a Memorandum of Understanding,’ says Carmen. They said they acknowledged the signing was ongoing [to campaign] It was my own choice.

‘I asked for physical protection but they said my risk was not high enough to require extra resources.’ But the latest harassment caused the police to stand up; However, door-to-door investigations and forensic examination of the letters have not yet yielded any clues.

‘Things have gotten better now,’ she admits, ‘because gender-based harassment is an issue they prioritize.

‘And,’ he sighs, ‘I set the bar even lower for my expectations.’

Carmen grew up in a cosmopolitan Hong Kong family. Her world-traveling father ran a jewelry business, while her mother was the daughter of a fishing family on Lantau, the largest of Hong Kong’s islands, where relatives still live in a traditional house on stilts over the water.

He misses his home, family and friends; sometimes he wanders around the City of London, looking at its skyscrapers and thinking about the iconic Asian skyline he loves.

‘What pushes me forward are the people of Hong Kong. “It’s not about the place itself, and it’s certainly not about power,” he says. ‘This is about our people. Sometimes I think I can never go back and I feel like such a small person in the world. But what happened to me here is nothing compared to those who have already sacrificed their freedom.’

What a tragedy that Britain, with its historical responsibility to Hong Kongers and its ancient tradition of liberal democracy, could not have done more to protect Carmen so that it could have protected those left behind.