Hackers attack group outraged by HSBC’s pro-LGBT rainbow statues
Hackers have targeted a “pro-family” group which was gathering signatures in protest against pro-LGBT statues outside HSBC’s central headquarters.
Roger Wong Wai-ming, the convenor of the Family School Sexual Orientation Discrimination Ordinance Concern Group, said its online petition had been hacked and thousands of signatures had been lost on a Chinese petition platform.
The group claimed to have collected 10,645 signatures on the platform, and that 72.6 percent were HSBC customers.
It also claimed that 16.6 percent of the signatures were stakeholders in the company.
The petition was launched in protest against what the organisation was a “disgusting” display, after the banking group unveiled rainbow lion statues at its Hong Kong headquarters.
“We already planned to stage a protest on December 14 in front of the two lions. However, we found that our Chinese website might be under attack as the signatures collected on December 9 were garbled,” Wong told the South China Morning Post.
The petition was organised by eight anti-LGBT groups.
“We don’t know how many garbled signatures are real. The IT experts we consulted believed that someone used a program to generate signatures with garbage information maliciously,” Wong continued.
The organisers also planned to protest as HSBC launched its ‘Celebrate Pride, Celebrate Unity’ campaign.
Diana Cesar, the group general manager and chief executive said the campaign had called for “equality for everyone”, and that the rainbow coloured lions of Stephen and Stitt, the iconic lions, had been in a show of solidarity with the LGBT community.
A spokeswoman for the bank said the commitment to diversity and inclusion had helped it attract more talent and to retain existing employees.
But despite the apparent setback, Wong said the groups will still protest the bank.
