A pro-Beijing politician who created a fake profile on a messaging app popular with pro-democracy protesters was found out after she used a photograph of a prominent pro-independence activist as her profile photo.
Elaine Chik, a district councillor for the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB), had created a Telegram account under the pseudonym @marychannn. However, instead of using her own photo — or even a random photo of something innocuous, like a cat — she (allegedly without realizing) used a headshot of Yau Wai-ching, one of the lawmakers-elect who were disqualified from taking office for oath-taking violations.
When confronted by Yau by phone, Chik’s claimed she “found the picture via web search, and I thought it was pretty.”
During the phone conversation — which was recorded and posted onto Yau’s Facebook page — when asked by Yau why she didn’t just use her own photo, Chik said, simply, “I don’t want to use my own photo.”
Chik denied suggestions from Yau that she and other pro-establishment supporters were disguising themselves as localist or pro-independence supporters in a bid to join affiliated groups on Telegram, which has been used by thousands to organize recent anti-extradition protests.
Chik repeatedly insisted that Yau’s photo had come up when she did a web search for a profile pic within the app. However, the profile pic search in Telegram requires users to input a search term, and Chik didn’t specify which terms she used.
It wasn’t clear from the phone conversation whether Chik genuinely didn’t know who Yau is, and at one point, she said she had changed the photo after friends told her who it was.
In her Facebook post, meanwhile, Yau urged people to be wary of people joining pro-democracy and pro-independence Telegram groups with fake profiles.
It was also unclear how long Chik had her Telegram account, and whether she had joined any of the groups credited with using the encrypted app to mobilize recent protests, which have been largely leaderless.
Yau confirmed to Coconuts HK that she got tipped off that Chik was using her photo on Telegram via a friend.
Chik didn’t respond to a request for comment from Coconuts HK but she did post a video onto her Facebook page repeating that she didn’t know the photo she picked for the profile image was of Yau and said she hopes Yau would forgive her.
Yau was elected to the Legislative Council in 2016 as a lawmaker, but was barred from taking her seat for not delivering the oath of office “sincerely and solemnly.” In Yau’s case, this involved draping a “Hong Kong is not China” flag on the table in front of her, replacing the “Republic” in “People’s Republic of China” with “re-f**king,” and referring to China as “zhee-na.”
The profanity — and the use of a Japanese wartime slur — prompted authorities to ban Yau and another fellow lawmaker, Baggio Leung, from joining the Legislative Council. Four other lawmakers were subsequently disqualified, also for improper oath-taking.
Update: This article has been updated to include a comment from Yau and Chik’s Facebook video response.
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