By James Pomfret and Jessie Pang
HONG KONG (Reuters) -A leading Macau democrat, Au Kam San, was arrested for collusion with foreign forces to endanger national security and was held in detention on Thursday in what is the first known arrest under the China-ruled city’s national security law.
Au, 68, is one of Macau’s most prominent democratic campaigners who served for nearly two decades as a lawmaker.
Macau’s Public Prosecutions Office said “compulsory detention” has been imposed on Au after a “preliminary investigation” following his arrest at his home the day before, according to a statement.
The statement added that the Public Prosecutions Office would fully hold accountable those who attempt to disrupt national security, and to “confront hostile forces to the end.”
Au is alleged by the police to have been in contact with an anti-China organisation based abroad since 2022, providing what they claimed is “false and seditious information” in order to incite hatred against the Chinese government.
The police said in a statement that Au had also spread false information to groups, sought to disrupt a 2024 election for Macau’s leader and to “provoke hostile actions by foreign countries against Macau”.
Through the years, Au had championed democratic reforms and civil society initiatives in the tiny enclave that returned from Portuguese to Chinese rule in 1999 — two years after the neighbouring former British colony of Hong Kong was handed back to China.
Unlike Hong Kong which saw big social movements challenge Chinese Communist Party rule in 2014 and 2019, the democratic opposition in the China-ruled former Portuguese colony has always existed on the fringes amid tight Chinese control.
Macau’s boom into one of the world’s biggest gambling hubs, with gaming receipts exceeding Las Vegas, has also been tainted by public corruption cases involving senior officials such as Ao Man Long and Ho Chio Meng.
Through the years, Au had led protests and railed against opaque governance and rising social inequalities even as gambling revenues exploded in the city of around 680,000.
Au was one of the founders of several pro-democracy groups and had worked as a school teacher. Jason Chao, a Macau-born activist now based in Britain said Au had occasionally made mildly critical online posts against the Chinese and Macau governments but nothing to warrant his arrest.
“There will be a profound chilling effect on the people of Macau,” Chao told Reuters.
This move in Macau comes as authorities in neighbouring Hong Kong continue to crackdown on dissent under two sets of powerful national security laws that have been used to jail activists and shutter liberal media outlets and civil society groups.
While Hong Kong’s democrats had actively challenged Beijing’s attempts to ratchet up control of the city since its return to Chinese rule, Macau’s government has faced far less public scrutiny, with authorities able to enact a sweeping set of national security laws in 2009 that was amended and bolstered in 2023.
(Additional reporting by Farah Master; Editing by Christopher Cushing; Michael Perry and Sandra Maler)
