{"id":70197,"date":"2025-03-17T23:12:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-17T14:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/mar\/17\/melbourne-residents-offered-200k-to-inform-on-australian-pro-democracy-activist-wanted-in-hong-kong-ntwnfb"},"modified":"2025-03-17T23:12:00","modified_gmt":"2025-03-17T14:12:00","slug":"melbourne-residents-receive-letter-offering-200k-for-information-on-hong-kong-pro-democracy-activist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=70197","title":{"rendered":"Melbourne residents receive letter offering $200k for information on Hong Kong pro-democracy activist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Exclusive:<\/strong> The anonymous letter contained a photograph of Kevin Yam, a lawyer who has criticised the crackdown on dissent in the Chinese-controlled city<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Get our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/email-newsletters?CMP=cvau_sfl\">breaking news email<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/app.adjust.com\/w4u7jx3\">free app<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/australia-news\/series\/full-story?CMP=cvau_sfl\">daily news podcast<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A small number of Melbourne residents have received anonymous letters purporting to offer a police bounty of $203,000 if they inform on an Australian citizen and pro-democracy activist wanted for alleged national security crimes in Hong Kong, linking him to two nearby locations.<\/p>\n<p>A spokesperson for the foreign minister, <a href=\"https:\/\/viewer.gutools.co.uk\/australia-news\/penny-wong\">Penny Wong<\/a>, told Guardian Australia the letter was \u201cdeeply worrying\u201d and that the matter would be raised directly with officials from China and Hong Kong.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/email-newsletters?CMP=copyembed\">Sign up for Guardian Australia\u2019s breaking news email<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/mar\/17\/melbourne-residents-offered-200k-to-inform-on-australian-pro-democracy-activist-wanted-in-hong-kong-ntwnfb\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Exclusive: The anonymous letter contained a photograph of Kevin Yam, a lawyer who has criticised the crackdown on dissent in the Chinese-controlled cityGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastA small number of Melbourne residents hav&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3588,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,43,50,48,414,1767],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-australia-news","category-china","category-hong-kong","category-melbourne","category-penny-wong"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3588"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70197"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70211,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70197\/revisions\/70211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}