Exclusive: Letters with deepfake images of Carmen Lau in UK and targeting of Ted Hui in Australia part of growing harassment
Sexually explicit letters and “lonely housewife” posters about high-profile pro-democracy Hong Kong exiles have been sent to people in the UK and Australia, marking a ratcheting up in the transnational harassment faced by critics of the Chinese Communist party’s rule in the former British colony.
Letters purporting to be from Carmen Lau, an exiled pro-democracy activist and former district councillor, showing digitally faked images of her as a sex worker were sent to her former neighbours in Maidenhead in the UK in recent weeks.
It is the first time that people on the Hong Kong police’s bounty list, wanted for national security offences, have been directly targeted with this kind of explicitly sexualised harassment, highlighting the heightened risks faced by female activists and their associates.
At least half a dozen of Lau’s former neighbours in Maidenhead received letters showing fake, sexualised images of her. They were posted from Macau, a semi-autonomous Chinese territory near Hong Kong. The letters have five deepfaked images of Lau, with her face superimposed on women’s bodies either naked or in underwear. One image shows the fake Lau performing a sex act, which has been pixelated.
