Nathan Law and the High Cost of Dissent: A Review of Targeted, Episode 3

Sustainability Times

07-06-2025

The conversation between Nathan Law and host Zach Abramowitz is intimate, revealing, and—like Law himself—layered with unresolved tension. You get the sense that Law has lived through more than he says, and says more than he's allowed.
Back in 2014, as the Umbrella Revolution surged into global headlines, Law was a university student with an extraordinary capacity to channel collective frustration into purpose. He became a legislative council member in Hong Kong at 23—the youngest in the city's history—and was quickly sentenced to prison for organizing protests. That moment, and the broader crackdown that followed, fractured the illusion of Hong Kong's democratic exceptionalism. But Law's story was just beginning.
'Activists are still human,' Law tells Abramowitz early in the episode. It's a theme that pulses throughout their conversation—the romantic notion of fearless dissidents erodes when you hear Law talk about midnight fears, his mother watching him arrested on live television, and the torment of leaving friends behind in a place that now considers him a national security threat. 'My goal is not for a cozy life,' Law admits. 'My goal is for a meaningful one.'
After fleeing to the UK in 2020 under threat of the new National Security Law, Law was granted asylum—but not relief. He details the suffocating sense of survivor's guilt, the isolation of COVID-era exile, and the surveillance campaigns orchestrated from Beijing's outposts in London. At one point, he was placed on a wanted list with a bounty on his head. Authorities raided his family home, interrogated his mother and brother, and fabricated stories to paint him as a foreign agent. It's collective punishment dressed in the language of law enforcement.
This episode doesn't just document a man hunted by a government; it exposes how narratives are weaponized. Law has been labeled a CIA puppet by Beijing loyalists, dismissed as a 'useful idiot of the Americans' by Western skeptics, and dragged through the mud without a shred of evidence. The campaign to discredit him operates on the logic that if you can't jail someone, you can try to break their credibility—or at least their will. The Richness Of This Episode Lies In The Tonal Depth Of Law's Reflection.
He remains haunted by what he's lost: not just a home, but a future that might have included ordinary joys—staying close to family, building a stable career, living anonymously. 'There are things I can't talk about,' he says of his last contact with family, his tone brushing the edge of heartbreak. For Law, silence is not safety—it's sacrifice.
Yet for all its grief, the episode is not grim. Law's clarity is breathtaking. He speaks of friends still imprisoned in Hong Kong—Joshua Wong, Gwyneth Ho—with reverence, not pity. He describes their courtroom bravery as a source of hope. 'Activism,' he says, 'is about people versus power.'
This line is the heart of the episode. While authoritarian regimes tighten their grip, this podcast episode insists on the power of memory, voice, and witness. It reminds us that repression may be global, but so is resistance.
In keeping with a reflective and narrative-driven style, the episode is also a subtle meditation on legacy. Law brushes off his nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize and TIME's '100 Most Influential People' with charming understatement. Those accolades, he says, are retrospective flourishes, not motivations. He's more concerned with whether he can still be useful to Hong Kong—whether, when the city is free, he'll have something left to give.
That Targeted allows space for such emotional granularity is a credit to its producers. It is not advocacy posing as journalism, nor is it voyeuristic tragedy porn. It is, rather, a reminder that to be targeted is not just to be attacked—but to be misunderstood, misrepresented, and sometimes mythologized. The podcast strips away the myth and leaves us with the man. About The Podcast
Targeted is an investigative podcast exploring how powerful states and corporations abuse legal, diplomatic, and media mechanisms to silence whistleblowers, dissidents, and journalists. Hosted by Zach Abramowitz, the series blends intimate interviews with legal and political context, giving listeners a front-row seat to the new age of transnational repression.
Future episodes will continue to probe the global dimensions of political targeting: Pavel Ivlev: A former Russian lawyer who blew the whistle on Kremlin corruption and fled to the United States. His story echoes the dangers faced by defectors under Putin's shadow.
Gaurav Srivastava: An entrepreneur and philanthropist who found himself the subject of a global smear campaign.
With each episode, Targeted peels back another layer of how systems meant to protect justice are being twisted to enforce silence. If the rest of the season is anything like Nathan Law's haunting, hopeful story, we're in for a revelation.
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