Nobody Is Safe Anymore In HK, Warns Commentator

A political commentator says Wednesday's massive round-up operation against pro-democracy figures in Hong Kong shows the government is ready to use any excuse it can to silence dissent and nobody is safe anymore.

Chung Kim-wah said police also contacted him on Wednesday morning, saying they need his assistance in the investigation into primary polls the pro-democracy camp held last year.

Chung said he would meet officers on Thursday.

He said primary elections or opinion polls are not legally binding, and are only conducted to help people find common ground.

"We don't think doing some primary election or opinion polls in any sense violate any laws in Hong Kong, including the national security law," he told RTHK's Frances Sit.

"This kind of arrests is going to transmit a message to the public that the government is trying to do anything it can, as long as the government can find an excuse. They are trying to do something to scare [people] away... to make people silent," said Chung.

The former Polytechnic University academic is a deputy head of the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute.

A video circulated online showed officers turning up with a search warrant at the home of the institute's founder, Robert Chung, on Wednesday morning. He wasn't arrested, however.

The office of the institute, which helped run the polls, was raided a day before the exercise in July last year, and officers again searched the premises on Wednesday morning.

But Chung Kim-wah said all the data relating to the primaries, including the personal information of those who voted, had been destroyed shortly after the polls were held.

However, he said he was concerned that people who helped out with the polls will also be arrested.

"I don't know what the government is going to do to these people. If the government wants to scare people from doing that [sort of] thing, nobody is safe," he said.