This is the best summary I could come up with:

A senior figure in the disbanded democratic opposition in Hong Kong has accused the Home Office of hardening its stance towards those fleeing the former British colony after a series of “absurd” rejections of asylum claims.

The rejection notices have demanded a contact address for a dissident leader who is in hiding from the Hong Kong authorities, included incorrect personal details, and cited a New York Times article as evidence that they could not have secured a passport if they were in any real danger.

Isaac Cheng, the former vice-president of Demosisto, whose members have been accused of collusion with foreign powers and rounded up, said immigration caseworkers appeared “predisposed to discredit” claims from even those who had been put on trial in Hong Kong over their role in protests.

The UK government has said it is determined to bring down migration into Britain after an official estimate found it had reached a record of 745,000 in the year to December 2022, with people fleeing the war in Ukraine and China’s crackdown on dissent in Hong Kong cited as a factor.

Cheng, who is in the UK where he has established the Initiative Safe project to help Hongkongers in need of assistance, said “absurd reasons” were now being given for the rejection of subsequent asylum claims, leading him to believe the government’s political crisis over migration was undermining its moral obligation to help.

Those whose applications have been rejected in recent weeks include a 23-year-old man who was arrested during the siege of Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) in 2019, when hundreds of protesters were trapped inside a campus, surrounded by police and came under teargas fire.

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