Thread by @WilliamYang120

The four trustees of the "612 Humanitarian Fund" in #HongKong were released on bail late last night. However, @laiyanhoeric said the arrest indicates that the #NSL is now weaponized to crack down on non-violent public activities in the city. My latest: dw.com/zh/612%E5%9F%B…

According to @hk01official, the police suspected that the fund's trustees began to "collude with foreign forces" prior to the imposition of the #NSL. It cited evidence including the fund was used to support members of #HongKong's civil society organization to ...

... to go to the UK and Geneva to lobby support from foreign lawmakers and "smear #HongKong." The police also suspected that the fund provided medical and legal support to NGOs in #Taiwan as well as Hong Kongers in Canada.

The police cited those "assistance" as the actual proof that the fund was used to support #HongKongers who have fled the city.

@laiyanhoeric said the arrest is a chilling effect on those who are supporting political prisoners waiting for criminal trials. "This would be a blow to many people in Hong Kong, especially for those who have donated and supported the crowd-funding platform," he told me.

Lai emphasized that the trust fund is a crowd-funding platform to support protesters facing criminal trials, including legal and humanitarian assistance. "In this sense, they were fully lawful and peaceful activities before the national security law," he said.

"The reasons why there is a humanitarian fund was because there was a lack of resources from the government’s legal aid system as well as the failure to provide adequate and fair support to the arrested or charged protesters," he added.

"If Hong Kong has a fair trial, due process and rule of law, people wouldn’t need to rely on the efforts of civil society at all."

Eric also said that the arrest of @CardJosephZen indicates that local authorities don’t care about the consequence of elevating the arrest to a diplomatic and geopolitical level.

"Since Vatican and China are still in a very ambiguous relationship and since they are supposed to renew their secret deal on appointing bishops every two years, ...

... it means that they don’t care about international responses or commitments to protect individual rights or religious freedom," he added.

As for the police's move to arrest #HongKong scholar Hui Po-keung at the airport will make the practice become "White Terror," because no one knows whether he or she is on the target list of the national security police.

"It would make many individuals who are active in the public sphere think twice or feel intimidated as they don’t know when or where they would be targeted by the police now," he told me.

"It’s very clear now that the national security law is used to target many kinds of non-violent public engagement. These are all peaceful activities that should be protected by the Basic Law," Lai said.

"Now the arrest of those who are involved in non-violent public engagement under the NSL would indicate that it’s highly risky to organize or initiate any activity that might be perceived as anti-government in the future," he added.