On August 23, 12 Hong Kong youths were intercepted by the Guangdong Coast Guard while absconding from Taiwan, and have been detained in Shenzhen for 97 days. The Shenzhen Yantian Public Security Bureau issued a press release on November 27, stating that the investigation of the 12 suspected of “organizing others to sneak across the border” and “sneaking across the border” had been completed and the case was transferred to the Yantian District People’s Procuratorate for review and prosecution in accordance with the law.
After the incident, the families of the Hong Kong people involved in the case have been petitioning for months, but the families and the mainland lawyer they hired to represent them have been unable to contact the arrested 12 people. Previously, many attorneys who went to the Yantian Detention Center to try to visit the detainees were told that the 12 Hong Kong people had been assigned “government-appointed lawyers. Some of the attorneys hired by the families were pressured to leave. The families wrote to the Yantian Branch earlier to request the release of information about the “government-appointed lawyers,” which was also rejected by the authorities. The incident received widespread international attention after it was reported in the media. The foreign ministers of the U.S. and the U.K. have repeatedly urged China to give the 12 Hong Kong people a fair legal process.
Under international pressure and concern, the families of the seven Hong Kong people finally received letters from their relatives on the 19th of this month, mainly saying that life is good and their families need not worry. However, some voices have pointed out that there are suspicious features in the letters, including the similar content and the use of simplified Chinese characters. According to a separate Apple Daily report Friday, the family of one of the 12 Hong Kong residents, Liao Ziwen, hired a mainland lawyer, Li Guopei, to meet with him at the Shenzhen Yantian Detention Center that morning, but the facility’s officers told him that Liao had “self-appointed” two lawyers inside the facility.
In response, Li Guopei questioned why Liao Ziwen, who was under the age of 18 at the time of the incident, could not appoint a lawyer on his own by law, and why he could hire a mainland lawyer on his own without his family’s knowledge, given that he was detained in the detention center.
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