Eight overseas-based Hong Kong activists issued with arrest warrants for alleged national security offences will be “pursued for life”, the territory’s chief executive says.

“The only way to end their destiny of being an abscondee who will be pursued for life is to surrender,” John Lee said on Tuesday.

Hong Kong police issued arrest warrants for the eight overseas-based activists on Monday, accusing them of national security offences, including foreign collusion and incitement to secession, and offered rewards for information leading to their arrest.

The accused are Nathan Law, Anna Kwok and Finn Lau, former MPs Dennis Kwok and Ted Hui, lawyer and legal scholar Kevin Yam, unionist Mung Siu-tat, and online commentator Yuan Gong-yi.

The police also offered rewards of $HK1 million ($191,400) for information leading to each possible arrest.

The activists are based in several countries, including Australia, Britain and the US. They are wanted under a national security law that Beijing imposed on Hong Kong in 2020.

Mr Yam, contacted in Australia by Reuters, said he would continue to criticise what he described as “tyranny”.

“It’s my duty … to continue to speak out against the crackdown that is going on right now, against the tyranny that is now reigning over the city that was once one of the freest in Asia,” Mr Yam, a senior fellow with Georgetown University’s Centre for Asian Law, said.

“All they want to do is try to make a show of their view that the national security law has extra-territorial effect,” said Mr Yam, who police accused of meeting foreign officials to instigate sanctions against Hong Kong officials, judges and prosecutors.”

Former Democratic party MP Ted Hui told Reuters the “bounty” added to the arrest warrants already issued for him under the national security law but “free countries will not extradite us”.

“The bounty … makes it clearer to the Western democracies that China is going towards more extreme authoritarianism,” he said in Australia, where he has lived since 2021 on a bridging visa.

The US condemned the move through a State Department spokesman, who said it set “a dangerous precedent that threatens the human rights and fundamental freedoms of people all over the world”.

British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said his government “will not tolerate any attempts by China to intimidate and silence individuals in the UK and overseas”.

Both these countries have criticised the national security law for being used to suppress Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement.

Chinese and Hong Kong authorities say the law has restored the stability necessary for preserving Hong Kong’s economic success.

Mr Lee said authorities would continue to monitor the actions and behaviour of the eight while overseas, without giving specifics on how authorities would do this.

“We want them to know that we will not sit and do nothing,” he said.

Mr Lee also appealed to the public to provide information about the activists.

The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, a broad coalition of politicians around the world, said in a statement the move “confirms fears of Hong Kongers abroad and represents a dangerous escalation in Beijing’s global war on dissent”.