Red Notices, Hong Kong, and the Fox in the Henhouse | Ben Keith writes for The Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation

On 23 April 2026 Ben Keith writes for The Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation. The article was first published here.

Later this year, Hong Kong will host the 94th INTERPOL General Assembly, bringing police chiefs from around the world to a jurisdiction where peaceful political expression is a criminal offense. It is a terrible idea. The event is a PR exercise designed to lend international legitimacy to a jurisdiction engaged in the systematic abuse of human rights at the behest of Beijing.

Hong Kong operates a highly sophisticated public relations machine to obscure the reality that a huge proportion of its Red Notice and extradition requests are politically motivated. INTERPOL says it welcomes media and civil society to its sessions, yet journalists and NGOs who have reported critically on Hong Kong cannot safely attend because they risk arrest.

An INTERPOL Red Notice is a request circulated to 196 member countries to locate and arrest an individual pending extradition, and although not technically an arrest warrant, in practice it often functions as one. I have spent years representing individuals targeted by politically motivated Red Notices, and China is among the most persistent and sophisticated abusers of the system.

Through its “Fox Hunt” and “Sky Net” programs, China uses Red Notices to locate targets abroad as one element of a broader transnational repression campaign, combining the notice with threats to family members, asset freezes, surveillance, and relentless calls urging so-called “voluntary” return. The charges are almost invariably financial, allegations of fraud or embezzlement that are difficult for any outside body to verify and straightforward to fabricate.

Hong Kong has become central to the problem. Since the National Security Law in 2020 and the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance in 2024, the authorities have issued arrest warrants and bounties for at least 19 overseas pro-democracy activists, canceled passports, interrogated family members, and brought criminal charges as leverage.

There is a particular risk to the more than 166,000 Hong Kongers who have arrived in the United Kingdom on British National Overseas (BNO) visas since 2021 that I do not think is widely enough understood. The BNO route leads to settlement after five years, but while that provides some safety, it does not make travel risk-free. The status protects them while they are in the United Kingdom, but nowhere else. If a BNO visa holder travels to a country that maintains an extradition treaty with Hong Kong or China (including France and Italy), and there is a Red Notice against them, they face a real risk of arrest, detention, and extradition. Anyone who is or may be of interest to Hong Kong’s national security apparatus should think very carefully before traveling abroad.

It should not be assumed that INTERPOL will act of its own accord to protect those at risk. INTERPOL’s Notices and Diffusion Task Force screens requests before publication and rejected 558 in 2025 on human rights grounds, but its capacity to investigate the merits of every case is limited, and unless an individual is prominent with a recognizable political profile, INTERPOL may simply not be aware of their situation. People have come up to me at events and said, “But I’m a political case,” and that may well be true, but unless INTERPOL has been told, it cannot act on information it does not have.

This is where pre-emptive requests to INTERPOL become important, and it is the single most effective step that individuals at risk can take. A pre-emptive request is a submission to INTERPOL’s Commission for the Control of INTERPOL’s Files, the CCF, asking INTERPOL not to process any future Red Notice against a named individual on the grounds that doing so would violate its own rules. A preemptive request can be made before any notice is issued to prevent one from being published, and if a Red Notice already exists, a separate application can be made for its deletion. In my experience, INTERPOL will cooperate where the political motivation behind a notice is clearly demonstrated.

At International Human Rights Advisors, my colleague Rhys Davies and I have obtained the removal of Red Notices for individuals targeted by Hong Kong and other authoritarian regimes, and we have secured asylum in the United Kingdom for people facing politically motivated prosecution from Hong Kong. For those who may be at risk, the message is a simple one: do not wait, seek advice on your immigration status, and consider alerting INTERPOL through a pre-emptive request before a Red Notice is attempted. Governments must act too, by opposing the General Assembly being held in Hong Kong, pressing INTERPOL for transparency, and ensuring that their own asylum systems provide real protection to those fleeing political persecution.

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