Exclusive: Obscure Indian cyber firm spied on politicians, investors worldwide

THIS STORY HAS IT ALL, SPIES, COMPUTER ESPIONAGE, ASTROLOGY, PORNOGRAPHY

Jack Stubbs, Raphael Satter, Christopher Bing

LONDON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A little-known Indian IT firm offered its hacking services to help clients spy on more than 10,000 email accounts over a period of seven years.

Sumit Gupta, owner and director of cybersecurity firm BellTroX InfoTech Services, walks outside his office in New Delhi, India, June 8, 2020. REUTERS/Alasdair Pal

New Delhi-based BellTroX InfoTech Services targeted government officials in Europe, gambling tycoons in the Bahamas, and well-known investors in the United States including private equity giant KKR and short seller Muddy Waters, according to three former employees, outside researchers, and a trail of online evidence.

Aspects of BellTroX’s hacking spree aimed at American targets are currently under investigation by U.S. law enforcement, five people familiar with the matter told Reuters. The U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment.

Reuters does not know the identity of BellTroX’s clients. In a telephone interview, the company’s owner, Sumit Gupta, declined to disclose who had hired him and denied any wrongdoing.

Muddy Waters founder Carson Block said he was “disappointed, but not surprised, to learn that we were likely targeted for hacking by a client of BellTroX.” KKR declined to comment.

Researchers at internet watchdog group Citizen Lab, who spent more than two years mapping out the infrastructure used by the hackers, released a report here on Tuesday saying they had "high confidence" that BellTroX employees were behind the espionage campaign.

“This is one of the largest spy-for-hire operations ever exposed,” said Citizen Lab researcher John Scott-Railton.

Although they receive a fraction of the attention devoted to state-sponsored espionage groups or headline-grabbing heists, “cyber mercenary” services are widely used, he said. “Our investigation found that no sector is immune.”

A cache of data reviewed by Reuters provides insight into the operation, detailing tens of thousands of malicious messages designed to trick victims into giving up their passwords that were sent by BellTroX between 2013 and 2020. The data was supplied on condition of anonymity by online service providers used by the hackers after Reuters alerted the firms to unusual patterns of activity on their platforms.

The data is effectively a digital hit list showing who was targeted and when. Reuters validated the data by checking it against emails received by the targets.


On the list: judges in South Africa, politicians in Mexico, lawyers in France and environmental groups in the United States. These dozens of people, among the thousands targeted by BellTroX, did not respond to messages or declined comment.

Reuters was not able to establish how many of the hacking attempts were successful.

BellTroX’s Gupta was charged in a 2015 hacking case in which two U.S. private investigators admitted to paying him to hack the accounts of marketing executives. Gupta was declared a fugitive in 2017, although the U.S. Justice Department declined to comment on the current status of the case or whether an extradition request had been issued.

Speaking by phone from his home in New Delhi, Gupta denied hacking and said he had never been contacted by law enforcement. He said he had only ever helped private investigators download messages from email inboxes after they provided him with login details.

“I didn’t help them access anything, I just helped them with downloading the mails and they provided me all the details,” he told Reuters. “I am not aware how they got these details but I was just helping them with the technical support.”

Reuters could not determine why the private investigators might need Gupta to download emails. Gupta did not return follow-up messages and repeatedly declined to talk when a Reuters reporter visited him at his office on Monday. Spokesmen for Delhi police and India’s foreign ministry did not respond to requests for comment.


HOROSCOPES AND PORNOGRAPHY

Operating from a small room above a shuttered tea stall in a west-Delhi retail complex, BellTroX bombarded its targets with tens of thousands of malicious emails, according to the data reviewed by Reuters. Some messages would imitate colleagues or relatives; others posed as Facebook login requests or graphic notifications to unsubscribe from pornography websites.

Fahmi Quadir’s New York-based short selling firm Safkhet Capital was among 17 investment companies targeted by BellTroX between 2017 and 2019. She said she noticed a surge in suspicious emails in early 2018, shortly after she launched her fund.

Initially “it didn’t seem necessarily malicious,” Quadir said. “It was just horoscopes; then it escalated to pornography.”

Eventually the hackers upped their game, sending her credible-sounding messages that looked like they came from her coworkers, other short sellers or members of her family. “They were even trying to emulate my sister,” Quadir said, adding that she believes the attacks were unsuccessful.

U.S. advocacy groups were also repeatedly targeted. Among them were digital rights organizations Free Press and Fight for the Future, both of whom have lobbied for net neutrality. The groups said a small number of employee accounts were compromised, but the wider organizations' networks were untouched. The spying on those groups was detailed in a report here by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 2017, but has not been publicly tied to BellTroX until now.

Timothy Karr, a director at Free Press, said his organization “sees an uptick in breach attempts whenever we’re engaged in heated and high-profile public policy debates.” Evan Greer, deputy director of Fight for the Future, said: “When corporations and politicians can hire digital mercenaries to target civil society advocates, it undermines our democratic process.”

While Reuters was not able to establish who hired BellTroX to carry out the hacking, two former employees said the company and others like it were usually contracted by private investigators on behalf of business rivals or political opponents.

Bart Santos of San Diego-based Bulldog Investigations was one of a dozen private detectives in the United States and Europe who told Reuters they had received unsolicited advertisements for hacking services out of India - including one from a person who described himself as a former BellTroX employee. The pitch offered to carry out “data penetration” and “email penetration.”

Santos said he ignored those overtures, but could understand why some people didn’t. “The Indian guys have a reputation for customer service,” he said.

Additional reporting by Alasdair Pal in NEW DELHI and Ryan McNeill in LONDON; Editing by Jonathan Weber, Chris Sanders and Edward Tobin

China, scientists dismiss Harvard study suggesting COVID-19 was spreading in Wuhan in August

LONDON (Reuters) - Beijing dismissed as “ridiculous” a Harvard Medical School study of hospital traffic and search engine data that suggested the new coronavirus may already have been spreading in China last August, and scientists said it offered no convincing evidence of when the outbreak began.

The research, which has not been peer-reviewed by other scientists, used satellite imagery of hospital parking lots in Wuhan - where the disease was first identified in late 2019 - and data for symptom-related queries on search engines for things such as “cough” and “diarrhea”.

The study’s authors said increased hospital traffic and symptom search data in Wuhan preceded the documented start of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in December 2019.

“While we cannot confirm if the increased volume was directly related to the new virus, our evidence supports other recent work showing that emergence happened before identification at the Huanan Seafood market (in Wuhan),” they said.

Paul Digard, an expert in virology at the University of Edinburgh, said that using search engine data and satellite imagery of hospital traffic to detect disease outbreaks “is an interesting idea with some validity.”

But he said the data were only correlative and - as the Harvard scientists noted - cannot identify cause.

“It’s an interesting piece of work, but I’m not sure it takes us much further forward,” said Keith Neal, a professor of the epidemiology of infectious diseases at Britain’s Nottingham University.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying, asked about the research at a news briefing on Tuesday, said: “I think it is ridiculous, incredibly ridiculous, to come up with this conclusion based on superficial observations such as traffic volume.”

The Harvard research, which was posted online as a so-called ‘preprint’, showed a steep increase in hospital car park occupancy in August 2019.

“In August, we identify a unique increase in searches for diarrhea which was neither seen in previous flu seasons or mirrored in the cough search data,” it said.

Neal said the study included traffic around at least one children’s hospital and that while children do get ill with flu, they do not tend to get sick with COVID-19.

Digard cautioned that by focusing only on hospitals in Wuhan, already known to be the epicenter of the outbreak, “the study forces the correlation.”

“It would have been interesting - and possibly much more convincing - to have seen control analyses of other Chinese cities outside of the Hubei region,” he said.


Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; additional reporting by Yew Lun Tian in Beijing and Kate Kelland in London, editing by Nick Macfie and Timothy Heritage
Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

MOTHER IS THE GOD 

WE CALL TO IN OUR PAIN 

ONE OF MY ROOM MATES WHEN I WAS IN HOSPITAL FOR MY AMPUTATION WAS SEVERLY INJURED IN A MOTORCYCLE ACCIDENT AND IN HIS PAIN AND ANGUISH HE CALLED FOR HIS MOTHER 

MY OTHER ROOMMATE WAS IN FOR NECROPHISHITIC BACTERIAL INFECTION IN HIS KNEE REPLACEMENTS THAT HE HAD JUST HAD DONE A MONTH EARLIER 

IN PAIN ASLEEP HE TOO CRIED FOR HIS MOTHER

NUIT ISIS HEKATE HERA 

ASTARTE DURGA ANAT SEKHMET ARTEMIS 

KORE MARA DOLORES 

THE GREAT MOTHER IS THE ORIGIN 

OF ALL RELIGIONS 

George Floyd's mother was not there, but he used her as a ...

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2 days ago - When Sheree Baldwin-Muhammad heard that George Floyd called out for his mother as he lay dying on a Minneapolis sidewalk, a white police ...

WHITE SUPREMACY 
Beatings, racial slurs: Germany's surge in racism reports


FILE PHOTO: Demonstrators gesture during a protest against police brutality and the death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd, in Frankfurt, Germany June 6, 2020. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany’s anti-discrimination agency saw a sharp rise in the number of reports of racism it received in 2019, and the agency’s head urged authorities to fix the institutional failings hindering the fight against it.

The numbers, published after a weekend in which tens of thousands of people filled Europe’s streets protesting in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, highlight how institutional racism and discrimination are far from unique to the United States.

According to the agency’s annual report, published on Tuesday, the number of complaints of racism the agency’s advice line received rose 10% to 1,176.


In complaints to the German agency, a hairdresser described a client shouting a racial slur across the salon to demand service from the person who normally massages her head.

A schoolchild wrote: “A child insulted my brother at school because he has a dark skin colour. Then he hit him. The teacher watched it all but did nothing.”

Bernhard Franke, the agency’s head, told a news conference that police were “not as free of discrimination as some of us would like to believe.


“We have seen 200 cases of racial profiling, of people who have been stopped by police purely because of their appearance,” Franke said.

Only half Germany’s federal states had created their own anti-discrimination agencies - an institutional shortcoming that hindered the fight against racism, he said.

Partly because of its World War Two history of genocide, Germany has long been on its guard against neo-Nazi violence, such as a gun attack on a synagogue last year, in which two passers-by died. Other forms of racism have received less attention.


Reporting by Thomas Escritt; Editing by Peter Graff
Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Open letter advocating for an anti-racist public health response to demonstrations against systemic injustice occurring during the COVID-19 pandemic

To view the signed letter, click here: https://bit.ly/PublicHealthOpenLetterSigned

Thousands pay tribute to George Floyd as pressure mounts for U.S. police reform

Erwin Seba

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Thousands of mourners braved sweltering Texas heat on Monday to view the casket of George Floyd, whose death after a police officer knelt on his neck ignited worldwide protests against racism and calls for reforms of U.S. law enforcement.

American flags fluttered along the route to the Fountain of Praise church in Houston, where Floyd grew up, as throngs of mourners wearing face coverings to prevent spread of the coronavirus formed a procession to pay final respects.

Solemnly filing through the church in two parallel lines, some mourners bowed their heads, others made the sign of the cross or raised a fist, as they paused in front of Floyd’s open casket. More than 6,300 people took part in the visitation, which ran for more than six hours, church officials said.

Fire officials said several people, apparently overcome by heat exhaustion while waiting in line, were taken to hospitals.

“I’m glad he got the send-off he deserved,” Marcus Williams, a 46-year-old black resident of Houston, said outside the church. “I want the police killings to stop. I want them to reform the process to achieve justice, and stop the killing.”

RELATED COVERAGE

Factbox: What changes are police, governments making in response to George Floyd protests?

Voices from the streets; why protesters are marching the world over

The public viewing came two weeks to the day after Floyd’s death was captured by an onlooker’s video. As a white police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes, an unarmed and handcuffed Floyd, 46, lay face down on a Minneapolis street, gasping for air and groaning for help, before falling silent.

The case was reminiscent of the 2014 killing of another African American, Eric Garner, who died after being placed by police in a chokehold while under arrest in New York City.

The dying words of both men, “I can’t breathe,” have become a rallying cry in a global outpouring of rage, drawing crowds by the thousands to the streets despite health hazards from the coronavirus pandemic.

The demonstrations stretched into a third week on Monday.

“Even though it is a risk to come out here, I think it has been a very positive experience. You hear the stories, you feel the energy,” Benedict Chiu, 24, told Reuters at an outdoor memorial service in Los Angeles.

“I’m here to protest the mistreatment of our black bodies. It’s not going to stop unless we keep protesting,” said Erica Corley, 34, one of hundreds attending a gathering in the Washington suburb of Silver Spring, Maryland.

As the public viewing unfolded in Houston, Derek Chauvin, 44, the police officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck and is charged with second-degree murder, made his first court appearance in Minneapolis by video link. A judge ordered his bail raised from $1 million to $1.25 million.

Chauvin’s co-defendants, three fellow officers accused of aiding and abetting Floyd’s murder, were previously ordered held on $750,000 to $1 million bond each.

All four were dismissed from the police department the day after Floyd’s death.

Unleashed amid pent-up anxiety and despair inflicted by a pandemic that has hit minority communities especially hard, the demonstrations have reinvigorated the Black Lives Matter movement and thrust demands for racial justice and police reforms to the top of America’s political agenda ahead of the Nov. 3 presidential election.

Protests in a number of U.S. cities were initially punctuated by episodes of arson, looting and clashes with police, deepening a political crisis for President Donald Trump as he repeatedly threatened to order the military into the streets to help restore order.



Attorney Ben Crump raises his arm as Philonise Floyd, brother of George Floyd, whose death in Minneapolis police custody has sparked nationwide protests against racial inequality, gets emotional while speaking during the public viewing of Floyd at The Fountain of Praise church in Houston, Texas, U.S., June 8, 2020. Standing on the left is Reverend Al Sharpton and in the background is George Floyd’s younger brother Rodney Floyd. REUTERS/Adrees Latif

POLICE ‘DEFUNDING’ STIRS CONTROVERSY
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, who is challenging the Republican Trump in the election, met with Floyd’s relatives for more than an hour in Houston on Monday, according to the family’s lawyer, Benjamin Crump.

“He listened, heard their pain and shared in their woe,” Crump said. “That compassion meant the world to this grieving family.” Floyd was due to be buried on Tuesday.

In Washington, Democrats in Congress unveiled legislation to make lynching a federal hate crime and to allow victims of police misconduct and their families to sue law enforcement for damages in civil court, ending a legal doctrine known as qualified immunity.

The bill also would ban chokeholds and require the use of body cameras by federal law enforcement officers, place new restrictions on the use of lethal force and facilitate independent probes of police departments that show patterns of misconduct.

Some departments are already taking action. On Monday, the Los Angeles Police Commission said the city’s police department had agreed to an immediate moratorium on training and using chokeholds.

The legislation does not call for police departments to be de-funded or abolished, as some activists have demanded. But lawmakers called for spending priorities to change.

Trump pledged to maintain funding for police departments, saying 99% of police were “great, great people.”

“There won’t be defunding, there won’t be dismantling of our police,” Trump told a roundtable of state, federal, and local law enforcement officials at the White House.

Biden opposes the movement to defund police departments but supports the “urgent need” for reform, a spokesman for his presidential campaign said.

A high-spirited atmosphere that prevailed over a series of mass demonstrations during the weekend was marred late on Sunday when a man drove a car into a rally in Seattle and then shot and wounded a demonstrator who confronted him.

The suspect, Nikolas Fernandez, told police he thought he could drive safely through the crowd, when his car was surrounded by protestors, a police report said. He was charged on Monday with assault.

Separately, a man described by prosecutors as an admitted member of the Ku Klux Klan and “propagandist for Confederate ideology,” was arrested on suspicion of driving his pickup truck into a rally near Richmond, Virginia, late on Sunday.

Also in Richmond, a judge issued a 10-day injunction blocking plans by the state governor to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

For a graphic on Floyd’s death sparks worldwide protests:

here

For a graphic on Weapons of Control: What U.S. police are using to corral, subdue and disperse demonstrators:

here


For Special Report on How union, Supreme Court shield Minneapolis cops:

here

For a graphic on Before the court: A united front takes aim at qualified immunity:

here

Family of black Frenchman who died in police custody call for protests

PARIS (Reuters) - The family of a black Frenchman who died in police custody in circumstances similar to the killing of George Floyd in the United States spurned talks with the justice minister and called on Tuesday for more street protests instead.

Adama Traore was celebrating his 24th birthday on July 19, 2016, when three police officers used their weight to restrain him. By the time he arrived at the police station, he was unconscious and could not be revived.

Medical experts differ on whether Traore died because of the restraint or because of an underlying medical condition.

His family demands that the officers involved be held to account and thousands marched in their support in Paris last Saturday. No one has ever been charged with Traore’s death.

“We’re demanding acts of justice, not discussions” Assa Traore, Adama’s sister, told a press conference.”We’ll protest in the streets, every week, if necessary.”

The family and ‘Truth for Adama’ campaign group called for a mass protest in central Paris on Saturday.

Worldwide anger over the killing of Floyd, including in France, has given new momentum to the Traore family’s campaign. Accusations of brutality and racism against French police remain largely unaddressed, rights groups say.


FILE PHOTO: Assa Traore, sister of Adama Traore, a 24-year-old black Frenchman who died in a 2016 police operation, poses during an interview with Reuters in Beaumont-sur-Oise, near Paris, June 7, 2020. REUTERS/Lucien Libert

France has at times fallen short in treating all people equally, a founding principle of the Republic, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said after meeting police officers in a Paris suburb. The police must also be shown respect, he added.

Describing the conditions in which Floyd died as “monstrous”, Philippe acknowledged that the worldwide outpouring of emotion “resonated with the fears and feelings of a part of the French population”.

“Collectively, we have not always necessarily been up to the challenge of the Republic’s principles.”

The government said on Monday it was banning a chokehold used to detain suspects and it promised zero tolerance for racism among police.

Reporting by Lucien Libert and Matthieu Protard; writing by Richard Lough; editing by Nick Macfie and Gareth Jones

London's statues from 'bygone' imperial past to be reviewed, mayor says

LONDON (Reuters) - London mayor Sadiq Khan has ordered a review of the capital’s statues and street names after the toppling of the statue of an English slave trader by anti-racism protesters triggered a debate about the demons of Britain’s imperial past.

A statue of Edward Colston, who made a fortune in the 17th century from trading West African slaves, was torn down and thrown into Bristol harbour on Sunday by a group of demonstrators taking part in a wave of protests following the death of George Floyd in the United States.

Khan said a commission would review statues, plaques and street names which largely reflect the rapid expansion of London’s wealth and power at the height of Britain’s empire in the reign of Queen Victoria.

“Our capital’s diversity is our greatest strength, yet our statues, road names and public spaces reflect a bygone era,” Khan said. He said some statues would be removed.

“It is an uncomfortable truth that our nation and city owes a large part of its wealth to its role in the slave trade and while this is reflected in our public realm, the contribution of many of our communities to life in our capital has been wilfully ignored.”

In the biggest deportation in known history, weapons and gunpowder from Europe were swapped for millions of African slaves who were then shipped across the Atlantic to the Americas. Ships returned to Europe with sugar, cotton and tobacco.

As many as 17 million African men, women and children were torn from their homes and shackled into one of the world’s most brutal globalized trades between the 15th and 19th centuries. Many died in merciless conditions.

Those who survived endured a life of subjugation on sugar, tobacco and cotton plantations. Britain abolished the trans-Atlantic slave trade in 1807 although the full abolition of slavery did not follow for another generation.

Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Nick Macfie

Protesters gather to mark 'million-people' march anniversary in Hong Kong

Jessie Pang, Yoyo Chow

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hundreds of protesters gathered in central Hong Kong on Tuesday to mark a year of sustained pro-democracy rallies as fears over looming national security legislation have reignited unrest in the global financial hub.

The crowd defied a government ban on gatherings of more than eight people due to the coronavirus, as well as a heavy riot police presence on the streets, with officers repeatedly seen conducting searches on those passing through the area.

Earlier on Tuesday, protesters gathered in several shopping malls to chant pro-democracy slogans, dispersing peacefully after an hour.

Some held placards reading “We can’t breathe! Free HK” and “Young lives matter”, nods to U.S. protests against police brutality sparked by the death of black American George Floyd.

“I am scared but I need to protest against national security laws. It’s important to continue to fight for freedom,” said 25-year-old Tai, who declined to give his full name.

Last year on June 9, an estimated more than one million protesters took to the streets against proposed legislation to allow extraditions to mainland China, where the courts are controlled by the Communist Party.
Pro-democracy demonstrators march holding their phones with flashlights on during a protest to mark the first anniversary of a mass rally against the now-withdrawn extradition bill, in Hong Kong, China June 9, 2020. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu

The government later withdrew the bill but widespread concern lingered that Beijing was stifling freedoms in the former British colony, sparking months of often-violent unrest.

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam warned on Tuesday that the city, which has enjoyed a high degree of autonomy since returning to Chinese rule in 1997, cannot afford further “chaos.”

“All of us can see the difficulty we have been through in the past year, and due to such serious situations we have more problems to deal with,” Lam told a weekly news conference.

“We need to learn from mistakes, I wish all lawmakers can learn from mistakes - that Hong Kong cannot bear such chaos.”

Almost 9,000 people, aged between 11 and 84, were arrested in protests over the past year, police said late on Monday. More than 600 were charged with rioting.

Activists, as well as many diplomats and business leaders fear national security laws targeting subversion, secession, treason and foreign interference will further undermine Hong Kong freedoms, including its independent legal system. The laws could also see mainland intelligence agencies set up shop.

“The crackdown is getting more and more severe,” said gym trainer Lee, 32.

More protests are planned in coming days and union leaders have said they intend to hold a referendum among their members on Sunday on whether to launch a city-wide strike.

Authorities have insisted the laws will focus on small numbers of “troublemakers” who pose a threat to national security and will not curb freedoms or hurt investors. Lam cautioned against the strike plans.

Prominent pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong said the world had witnessed “the deteriorating situation in Hong Kong, with Beijing tightening its grip over the city’s liberties”.

“I have strong confidence in Hongkongers that we will have ways to resist and defy,” Wong posted on Twitter. “Moreover, I hope the world can stand with Hong Kong and protect the city from falling.”

Washington has said it would remove Hong Kong’s special treatment in U.S. laws as it deemed the city to no longer be sufficiently autonomous. The European Union, Britain and others have expressed concerns about the proposed legislation, while Beijing hit back against foreign meddling in its affairs.

Reporting by Jessie Pang, Carol Mang, Yanni Chow, Donny Kwok, Clare Jim and Noah Sin; Writing by Anne Marie Roantree and Marius Zaharia; Editing by Tom Hogue, Jane Wardell and Nick Macfie

A year on, Hong Kong democracy protesters torn between hope and fear

Yanni Chow, Carol Mang

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Medical sector worker Tana has attended peaceful lunchtime rallies in Hong Kong regularly for months along with thousands of others protesting Beijing’s influence and calling for greater democracy in the global financial hub.

Now, a year on from a mass rally that kicked off a large scale and often violent anti-government movement, 37-year-old Tana and her husband fear not enough has changed.

The protests succeeded in forcing a backdown by the Hong Kong government on proposed legislation that would have allowed extradition to mainland China. But a year later, authorities in Beijing are drafting national security laws that activists fear would further curb freedoms.

For Tana and her family, including a son born just before the protests began, pragmatism is beginning to trump idealism.

“I am most worried about my child,” Tana told Reuters, requesting her surname be withheld for security reasons. The family has already shifted their savings abroad, she said, and “emigration might be an option.”

Among supporters of the protest movement, feelings range from slim hope to acute fear of oppression. After a relative respite during the coronavirus outbreak, protesters are again taking to the streets against the proposed security laws. Officials have said the laws would target a small number of “troublemakers” with provisions against secession, subversion, terrorism and foreign interference.

Ng, a retired 63-year-old woman is among those looking back at the past year with pride and pledges to keep demonstrating.

“A single spark can start a huge blaze,” she said, also requesting she be identified by one name only. “The more the government suppresses us, the more resisting we become.”
Pro-democracy demonstrators stage a rally for the first anniversary of a mass rally against the now-withdrawn extradition bill, at a shopping mall in Hong Kong, China June 9, 2020. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu

David, 22, who works in insurance and declined to give his surname, said a mix of violent and peaceful tactics was needed for international attention.

David said he “sometimes felt overwhelmed with fear” when he helped at rallies by mixing petrol bombs and disabling tear gas canisters, but he felt compelled to continue.

Demonstrations have often turned violent, with protesters blocking roads, vandalising shops perceived to have pro-Beijing links and throwing bricks and molotovs at the police, who have responded with tear gas and rubber bullets.

Isaiah Choy, who studies in Britain but came back last year to take part in peaceful protests, said violent tactics should be abandoned. The 21-year-old said he is frustrated with Hong Kong being treated as a “pawn” in U.S.- China conflicts.

Washington, which has traded barbs with Beijing over trade, the coronavirus pandemic and other issues, says China has quashed the high degree of autonomy that Hong Kong was promised for at least 50 years when it returned from British to Chinese rule in 1997. Beijing has dismissed the claim and urged Washington not to meddle.

MUTUAL DESTRUCTION

The protests have strong support among Hong Kong’s 7.5 million people, according to opinion polls, with about one third of the population opposed.

Keung, 50, said he supported national security laws and hoped the pro-democracy movement “will end soon because evil can never prevail over good.”

“It is normal for the government to set up laws to tighten its grip when people are violating the previous ones,” Keung, who also gave one name only, told Reuters.

Others vow to continue to protest for as long as it takes.

Sixty-four-year-old retiree Fu has embraced the often chanted slogan “if we burn, you burn with us,” referring to the belief that as a magnet for global capital, Hong Kong is the goose that lays the golden eggs for the mainland economy.

Fu said he has lost many childhood friends because of his position, but he has no regrets: “I am a die hard fan of mutual destruction and Hong Kong independence.”

Writing by Marius Zaharia; editing by Jane Wardell

WHITE RIGHT WING EVANGELICALS VS SOCIAL JUSTICE CHRISTIANITY

After George Floyd's death, a groundswell of religious activism

Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - George Floyd’s death has triggered a groundswell of outrage and activism by religious leaders and faith-based groups across the United States, reminiscent of what occurred during the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

Protesters march past St. John's Church during a rally against the death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd, near the White House in Washington, U.S., June 7, 2020. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

Conservative and mainstream religious leaders are joining with Black churches, progressive Catholics and Protestants, Jewish synagogues and other faith groups in calling for police reforms and efforts to dismantle racism.

Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American man, died after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes on May 25. The officer has been fired and charged with second-degree murder, but protesters and activists around the world are pushing for deeper change.

“We’re seeing it at the grassroots level. We’re seeing rabbis walking alongside Muslim leaders, walking alongside Catholic priests and religious sisters,” said Johnny Zokovitch, executive director of Pax Christi USA, a national Catholic peace and justice group. “We are seeing that race cuts across all religious denominations.”

More than 1,000 rabbis, pastors, imams and other religious leaders held an online conference last week to brainstorm ways to address systemic violence against African Americans.

There is a new “breadth and depth” in the faith-based response, said one participant, Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, citing a great hunger for connection after months of social distancing and lockdown because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Folks are just so angry. They’re angry about enduring racism, they’re angry about the incompetent response to COVID, they’re angry about bigotry and racism, about anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, and white supremacy,” he said.

Progressive religious groups had an important role in shaping the emerging movement, much as they did in the civil rights movement, but today’s actions are attracting a more diverse set of participants, Pesner said.

ELECTION ISSUERepublican Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election with strong support from evangelical Christians and Catholics. But Floyd’s death and Trump’s criticism of protesters may be a factor when members of those religious groups go to the polls in November.


While federal tax rules prevent houses of worship from taking an overt partisan stance, clergy are not banned from expressing their personal opinions.

Trump was sharply criticized by mainstream Catholic and Episcopal leaders after protesters were forcibly cleared for a staged photo of him last week in front of Washington’s historic St. John’s Episcopal Church across from the White House.

Some right-leaning religious leaders have since called him out or joined protests, unlike in the 1960s when some white evangelical leaders, including the Rev. Billy Graham, did not here take part in the civil rights movement.

Televangelist Pat Robertson chided the president last week for threatening to send in military troops if governors did not quell violent protests. “He spoke of them as being jerks. You just don’t do that, Mr. President. It isn’t cool!”

Joel Osteen, the senior pastor from Texas megachurch Lakewood, marched with protesters last week in Houston. “We need to stand against injustice and stand with our Black brothers and sisters,” said Osteen.

Republican Senator Mitt Romney, a Mormon, joined hundreds of Christian evangelicals at a march in Washington on Sunday, and tweeted here out "Black Lives Matter."



FILE PHOTO: U.S. Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) marches during a protest against racial inequality in the aftermath of the death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd, in Washington, U.S., June 7, 2020. Mitt Romney/Social Media via REUTERS


Some churches have also stepped up efforts to boost voter registration in recent weeks, much as churches did in the 1960s.

Data collected after Floyd's death from the non-partisan Public Religion Research Institute showed here 37% of white Catholics held favorable views of Trump, down from 49% in 2019, and a drop from the 60% who voted here for Trump in 2016.

POOR PEOPLE’S CAMPAIGN

Data collected after Floyd's death from the non-partisan Public Religion Research Institute showed https://www.prri.org/research/trump-favorability-white-catholic-and-non-college-americans-national-unrest-protests 37% of white Catholics held favorable views of Trump, down from 49% in 2019, and a drop from the 60% who voted https://www.prri.org/spotlight/religion-vote-presidential-election-2004-2016 for Trump in 2016.

Religious leaders held an online eulogy for Floyd and interfaith service on Sun A June 20 onlinday, https://www.facebook.com/events/2154673621324315 staged a day of fasting on Monday, and observed eight minutes and 46 seconds of silence to mark the exact amount of time Floyd was held down as he pleaded: "Please, I can't breathe."e "assembly" including 16 religious denominations seeks to revive the "Poor People's Campaign" launched after the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. Subtitled "A National Call for Moral Revival," it will also focus on Floyd, organizers say.

“We are in a deep moral crisis,” said the Rev. William Barber, pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, North Carolina, who is one of the key organizers.

“What we have to do at this moment is not only address what happened to George Floyd, but the interlocking problems of systemic racism, police brutality, the lack of healthcare, poverty and militarism,” he said.

Najuma Smith-Pollard, a Black pastor and community activist in Los Angeles, said the protests had already triggered action that once seemed impossible - the Los Angeles mayor yanked $150 million from the police department’s budget and diverted it to programs for youth jobs, healthcare and trauma recovery.

“I don’t think it’s a blip,” she said. “Too many things are at stake and too many people are engaged. This is no longer a local matter - it’s national, it’s global.”


Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Peter Cooney