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SYDNEY: Australia voiced unease on Tuesday over anonymous letters reportedly offering hefty rewards for information on a Hong Kong activist now living in Melbourne.
Australian citizen Kevin Yam, a lawyer and longtime Hong Kong pro-democracy activist, was targeted in letters that carried his photo and alleged national security offenses.
The letters, first reported in The Guardian newspaper, offered a reward of HK$1 million ($128,000) to anyone who could provide information about him and the allegations or “take him to Hong Kong or Australia Metropolitan Police.”
They were sent to homes next to two Melbourne locations cited in the notices as being linked to Yam, the paper said.
“The Australian government will not tolerate surveillance, harassment or intimidation against individuals or family members here in Australia — this undermines our national sovereignty and the security and safety of Australians,” said a spokesperson for Foreign Minister Penny Wong.
“We are raising our concerns directly with Chinese and Hong Kong authorities.”
In a message on social media, Yam said he would continue to live his “everyday life.”
“I will not voluntarily return to Hong Kong before it is free,” he said.
“I will not kill myself.”
Beijing expressed “strong dissatisfaction and resolute opposition” to what it called “Australia’s blatant interference” in Hong Kong’s law.
“Hong Kong affairs are purely a Chinese internal affair and brook no interference from any outside powers,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told a regular briefing, when asked about the case concerning Yam.
“China urges Australia to earnestly respect China’s sovereignty... and create favorable conditions and atmosphere for the sustainable development of China-Australia relations,” she added.
The letters were not signed but asked for information to be sent to a Hong Kong police email address used for tip-offs on wanted people.
The Hong Kong government said it does not issue anonymous letters.
Recipients should “remain cautious to verify the authenticity” of any such letters and seek help from local police if needed, a government spokesman told AFP.
Hong Kong law enforcement will pursue overseas suspects in accordance with the law and “take every measure” to stop them from continuing to endanger national security, the spokesman added.
Yam reportedly returned to Australia in 2022 after two decades in Hong Kong.
In 2023, Hong Kong chief executive John Lee called on eight overseas activists including Yam to turn themselves in for violating the national security law.
At the time, he backed a police decision to offer HK$1 million for information leading to their arrests, and warned the activists to surrender or “spend their days in fear.”
All eight fled Hong Kong after Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law on the financial hub in 2020 to quell dissent after huge, sometimes violent, pro-democracy protests in 2019 were quashed.

LONDON: Real-life spies say their world is nothing like that of James Bond, but in one way truth may soon follow fiction: MI6 could be about to get its first woman leader.
Britain’s foreign intelligence agency launched a search for its next chief on Tuesday, and the current officeholder has suggested he’d like his replacement to be a woman. Although Judi Dench played M, the fictional head of MI6, in seven Bond thrillers starting in the 1990s, the real-life agency has not had a woman chief in its 116-year history.
Richard Moore, the current C — as the real-life MI6 chief is known — wrote on X in 2023 that he would “help forge women’s equality by working to ensure I’m the last C selected from an all-male shortlist.”
Britain’s two other main intelligence agencies have already shattered the spy world’s glass ceiling. MI5, the domestic security service, was led by Stella Rimington from 1992 to 1996 and Eliza Manningham-Buller between 2002 and 2007. Anne Keast-Butler became head of electronic and cyber-intelligence agency GCHQ in 2023.
Moore, an Oxford-educated former diplomat, fits the 007 mold like a Savile Row suit. But in recent years MI6 has worked to shed its image as the least diverse of the agencies, broadening its recruitment process from the traditional “tap on the shoulder” at an elite university.
The agency’s website stresses its family-friendly flexible working policy and goal of recruiting “talented people from all backgrounds.”
In 2021, Moore apologized on behalf of MI6 for its treatment of LGBT staff and aspiring agents who were fired or denied jobs because of their sexuality. Gay people were barred from working for the agency until 1991.
Moore said in a 2023 speech that he wanted MI6 to “better represent the country we serve.”
“Diversity brings greater creativity, better problem-solving,” he said.
In posts on X last week to mark International Women’s Day, Moore said: “No one gets a job in MI6 except on merit. But we men, as allies, can help our female colleagues achieve the success their talent deserves. We have yet to have a woman as Chief so there’s still a glass ceiling to shatter.”
Moore, appointed in 2020, has led MI6 through the COVID pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war. He has opened the secretive agency ever-so-slightly to media scrutiny, making public speeches and embracing social media.
Like many things about MI6, also known as the Secret Intelligence Service, the process of choosing Moore’s replacement takes place out of public view. It began with the country’s top civil servant, Cabinet Secretary Chris Wormald, writing to government departments on Tuesday asking them to put forward candidates.
Applicants may come from among three MI6 directors-general who report to Moore, all of whom are women. That includes the agency’s head of operations and its technology chief – the real-life equivalent of Bond gadget-master Q.
Applicants also could come from other intelligence agencies, the civil service, the diplomatic service, the armed forces or the police.
An announcement of the choice is likely in the summer, with the new chief taking up their post in the fall.