Police in Hong Kong offer rewards to six additional foreign campaigners.

Hong Kong police have announced bounties of HK$1m (about £105,000) for information leading to the arrest of six democracy advocates based overseas and accused of national security crimes.

Authorities also said they would cancel the passports of seven others for whom bounties had already been issued, including the former lawmakers Ted Hui and Dennis Kwok, local media said.

Political dissent in Hong Kong has been quashed since Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law in 2020 after huge, sometimes violent pro-democracy protests the year before.

Many opposition figures fled abroad, while others have been arrested and sentenced to years in jail.

Tuesday’s announcement is the third time authorities have offered rewards of HK$1m for help capturing those alleged to have violated the city’s national security laws.

The two previous rounds of bounties in July and December last year were met with intense criticism from western countries, with Hong Kong and China in turn railing against “interference” from foreign nations.

The bounties are seen as largely symbolic given that they affect people living abroad in countries unlikely to extradite political activists to Hong Kong or China.

Five of the six people targeted on Tuesday are accused of inciting secession and collusion with a foreign country or external forces. They range from 29-year-old Carmen Lau, a former district councillor now living in Britain, to the former pollster Chung Kim-wah.

Victor Ho Leung-mau, a 69-year-old YouTuber now based in Canada, is charged with subversion. “I just learned that I am now a wanted Hong Konger,” Lau wrote on X. “In 2019, [I] was not afraid of tear gas and bullets, and now I do not and will not back down only because of an arrest warrant and a bounty.”

Hong Kong has previously cancelled the passports of other pro-democracy activists on its wanted list under its second national security law enacted in March.

China’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday it supported Hong Kong “performing its duties in accordance with the law”. “Hong Kong is a society governed by the rule of law and no one has extrajudicial privileges,” said the ministry’s spokesperson, Mao Ning.

Human Rights Watch called the bounties “a cowardly act of intimidation”. “We call on the UK and Canadian governments to act immediately to push back against the Hong Kong government’s attempts to threaten Hongkongers living in their countries,” the NGO’s associate China director, Maya Wang, said in a statement.