Focusing on intelligence gathering, public education and immigration control

Marcus Lum

Hong Kong police and disciplined forces are advancing efforts to prevent terrorism-related crimes in the SAR by establishing designated working groups responsible for intelligence gathering, public education and immigration control.

The initiative follows Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu's proposal to create a three-tier prevention framework to strengthen counter-terrorism preparedness in last month's policy address.

The framework will be led by a Chief Executive Counter-terrorism Steering Group to guide and formulate Hong Kong's counter-terrorist approaches and strategies.

At the same time, the secretary for security coordinating group will be responsible for facilitating and coordinating counter-terrorism collaboration among different departments.

Interdepartmental working groups will then carry out specific measures to tackle different security threats.

Seven preventive working groups will address current terrorist threats, with the police overseeing five and other disciplined services managing the two remaining groups, according to the police.

The working groups will cover areas such as intelligence, public education, information security, local immigration control, cargo regulation, monitoring high-risk inmates and critical infrastructure, with relevant meetings planned for next year.

"The working groups will cover areas that we can improve to prevent terrorism or terrorist threat against Hong Kong," senior superintendent Peter Leung Wai-ki from the Inter-departmental Counter Terrorism Unit said.

Leung said the working groups will hold meetings once every six months starting next year to protect the city from the threat of global and local terrorism.

He also said the SAR is still under the threat of local terrorism.

"Although the related violent incidents within the city have subsided, we observed that there are still extremists attempting to spread extreme ideologies through the online world or social media."

He also added that the unit will remain vigilant against the possibility that some individuals may be influenced by these extreme ideologies and attempt to carry out lone-wolf attacks.