Hong Kong Police Say Activist Faked Account of Kidnapping and Torture
15, 2017
HONG KONG — The police in Hong Kong said on Tuesday
that a pro-democracy activist falsified his account last week of being abducted by men he said were mainland Chinese security officers who put staples in his legs.
The activist, Howard Lam, a member of Hong Kong’s Democratic Party, gave his account to reporters last week and showed rows of staples in his upper thighs
that his supporters said were meant as a warning to people who might cross the mainland authorities.
He said that he received a call last week from a man speaking Mandarin, a language not much used among Hong Kong’s Cantonese speakers.
But FactWire, a local investigative news agency, compiled security video
that appeared to show Mr. Lam heading home from shopping on his own, with no signs of a kidnapping.
Mr. Lam said that in early July, he wrote to F.C.
They knocked him out with a chemical that he was forced to inhale, he said, then
took him to a rural area where they beat him and drove staples into his legs.