'Foreign forces instigated rallies even before 1997'

"Foreign forces" plotted to endanger national security through Hong Kong even before the 1997 handover, Chris Tang Ping-keung said.

In a social media video, the secretaary for security said foreign powers had already "cultivated" local oppositionists to get them to organize mass rallies since 2003.

"The anti-article 23 legislation rally at that time was a trial run," Tang said.

They found they could draw people into the streets if they could create social issues and confrontations and give the administration a hard time in governance, he said.

"They twisted things around to portray even right things as wrong, making it very difficult for the government to move forward."

Tang said the government wanted to implement national education in 2012 after it noticed the younger generation has been "radicalized."

However, the foreign forces "played the same old tricks again" by asking some agents to smear the policy, he said.

In 2014, agents opposed constitutional reforms, leading to the 79-day Occupy Central, which he said severely affected the city's economy.

"Although that movement ended in failure, some started to advocate the ineffectiveness of taking to the streets peacefully and that in order to succeed, violence had to be added," Tang said.

He said agents of foreign forces then incited Hongkongers, especially the young, to use violence in 2019. They also published fake news to make "inaccurate and biased" reports about the SAR, he said.

Tang's video appeared on the same day that Law Society president Chan Chak-ming was quick to distance himself from the Law Association for Asia and the Pacific after it expressed concerns over arrest warrants for eight Hong Kong activists who fled overseas.

Chan, an executive committee member of the association, said it's unacceptable to put pressure on the society during its investigation of Kevin Yam Kin-fung - one of the eight suspects with a HK$1 million bounty.

The SAR administration has filed complaints with the society and the Bar Association about Yam and barrister Dennis Kwok Wing-hang for professional misconduct.

The association on Monday also expressed concern over the probes of Kwok and Yam, prompting the SAR on Tuesday to "strongly oppose and condemn" overseas legal professional organizations for "groundless attacks, slanders and smears" targeting the security law.