A top Hong Kong activist has called on the Israeli government to stop providing the Chinese authorities with spying technologies, which are used by Beijing to quell protesters.
Joshua Wong, a Hong Kong pro-democracy leader, urged Israel to block a civilian technology company from selling products China used to spy on protesters, the Jerusalem Post reported on Friday.
It said Wong wrote a Facebook post saying a software developed by an Israeli company called Cellebrite was used by the Hong Kong police forces to hack into his phone.
Wong also shared a letter by Israeli human rights lawyer Eitay Mack calling on the Defense Ministry and Economy Ministry to block Cellebrite from exporting its product to Hong Kong.
The letter was cosigned by 37 Israeli human rights activists “who support the rights of the citizens of Hong Kong to life, liberty and personal safety under a democratic government which will uphold their civil and human rights.”
The activists stated that the Cellebrite system was used to hack into the phones of 4,000 Hong Kong citizens. Along with the letter is a Hong Kong police document indicating that Cellebrite was used to break into Wong’s phone in April 2020.
The Israeli spy technologies allowed the Chinese authorities to control the phones of millions of residents and to even control them.
Almost a year ago, protests spread across Hong Kong after the Chinese Parliament passed a new national security law that gives Beijing broad powers to crack down on a variety of political crimes, mainly four major offenses in the law: separatism, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign countries.
Protesters in Hong Kong opposed the law, describing it as a means to outlaw dissent and destroy the autonomy promised when Hong Kong was returned from the UK to China in 1997.
Last month, Chinese President Xi Jinping signed the contentious law.
