A local church supportive of the city’s pro-democracy protests said Monday that its HSBC bank account, along with the accounts of its pastor and his wife, have been frozen.
The Good Neighborhood North District Church, located in Sheung Shui, created an online petition early Tuesday urging HSBC to unfreeze the three bank accounts and explain the decision for seizing them.
“This is no doubt an act of political retaliation,” the church wrote in the petition description.
Good Neighborhood church is behind the “Safeguard our Children”—also known as “Protect the Kids”—group that acted as mediators for frontline protesters confronting police during last year’s demonstrations.
Wearing their signature yellow vests, the middle-aged and elderly volunteers with “Safeguard our Children” have also held sit-in at malls to protest against police violence. The group attracted considerable media attention, the old ages of the volunteers a contrast to the young protesters mobilizing the movement.
Read more: Hong Kong’s ‘gray hairs’ march in support of young protesters
“All the fund raised are legal donations from parties who wish to support our actions on serving the needy including those who are being ignored,” the church wrote.
It added that the church started its “Hostel for Homeless” program in 2014 to house street sleepers, and that the Social Welfare Department have routinely approached the church for assistance in sheltering the homeless since the COVID-19 epidemic began.
“Freezing the church account would lead to immediate termination of the hostel service, inevitably forcing the homeless to be homeless again,” the church wrote.
At the time of writing, the petition had received over 15,500 signatures.
In the petition statement, the church called HSBC’s actions a “purge” akin to the asset freezing of ex-lawmaker Ted Hui and his family. Hui, who faces numerous protest-related charges and is now in exile in the UK, said over the weekend that his personal bank accounts had been frozen.
Police told reporters Monday that they were investigating suspected embezzlement of crowdfunded money.
Good Neighborhood church said both instances of asset freezing “severely eradicate dissent in Hong Kong” and suppress “freedom among religions and community service workers.”
Many who signed the church’s petition left comments criticizing HSBC.
One comment read: “It’s totally unethical for a bank to freeze any bank accounts for political reasons.”
