A 27-year-old man faces up to several years in jail for sedition, after pleading guilty to wearing a protest T-shirt that prosecutors say flouts Hong Kong’s new national security law.
Chu Kai-pong (諸啟邦) had already served a three-month prison term for sedition in January for wearing and keeping in his luggage clothes and flags with protest slogans.
Yesterday, he pleaded guilty to one count of “doing acts with seditious intent,” leading to the territory’s first conviction under the new tougher law.
File photo: grab from FB
One of the slogans on the T-shirt, “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times,” had been found to be “capable of inciting secession” in a separate court case.
Chu was arrested for wearing a T-shirt with the offending slogan and a yellow mask printed with “FDNOL” — the shorthand of another slogan “five demands, not one less” — on June 12 — a date associated with the huge and sometimes violent democracy protests in 2019.
Chu told police he believed the slogan called for the return of Hong Kong to British rule, the court heard, and he chose the outfit to remind the public of the 2019 protests when the phrase was widely used by pro-democracy demonstrators.
Photo: Reuters
Convicting Chu following his guilty plea, chief magistrate Victor So (蘇惠德) added that two other offenses of failing to produce an ID card and loitering were dropped.
Chu, who has been in custody for three months, is to be sentenced on Thursday.
Hong Kong enacted a tougher national security law in March, the second legislation of its kind following the one imposed by Beijing in the middle of 2020 afterb quashing the protests.
The revised law beefed up the offense of sedition — a colonial-era offense — to include inciting hatred of China’s communist leadership and upped its maximum jail sentence from two years to seven.
It also punishes five categories of crimes: treason, insurrection, sabotage, espionage and external interference.
Chu’s lawyer argued that the maximum he could be given would be two years. Sedition was created under British colonial rule, which ended in 1997, and was seldom used until Hong Kong authorities revived it in 2020 and charged more than 50 people and four companies.
Critics, including Western nations such as the US, say the new security law would further erode freedoms and silence dissent in Hong Kong.
However, authorities defended the law as necessary to fulfill a “constitutional responsibility,” comparing it to a “reliable lock to prevent someone from breaking into [our] home.”
As of last month, 301 people had been arrested under the two security laws, with 176 prosecuted and 157 convicted.
Additional reporting by Reuters
GET TO SAFETY: Authorities were scrambling to evacuate nearly 700 people in Hualien County to prepare for overflow from a natural dam formed by a previous typhoon Typhoon Podul yesterday intensified and accelerated as it neared Taiwan, with the impact expected to be felt overnight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, while the Directorate-General of Personnel Administration announced that schools and government offices in most areas of southern and eastern Taiwan would be closed today. The affected regions are Tainan, Kaohsiung and Chiayi City, and Yunlin, Chiayi, Pingtung, Hualien and Taitung counties, as well as the outlying Penghu County. As of 10pm last night, the storm was about 370km east-southeast of Taitung County, moving west-northwest at 27kph, CWA data showed. With a radius of 120km, Podul is carrying maximum sustained
Tropical Storm Podul strengthened into a typhoon at 8pm yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with a sea warning to be issued late last night or early this morning. As of 8pm, the typhoon was 1,020km east of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost tip, moving west at 23kph. The storm carried maximum sustained winds of 119kph and gusts reaching 155kph, the CWA said. Based on the tropical storm’s trajectory, a land warning could be issued any time from midday today, it added. CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said Podul is a fast-moving storm that is forecast to bring its heaviest rainfall and strongest
President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday criticized the nuclear energy referendum scheduled for Saturday next week, saying that holding the plebiscite before the government can conduct safety evaluations is a denial of the public’s right to make informed decisions. Lai, who is also the chairman of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), made the comments at the party’s Central Standing Committee meeting at its headquarters in Taipei. ‘NO’ “I will go to the ballot box on Saturday next week to cast a ‘no’ vote, as we all should do,” he said as he called on the public to reject the proposition to reactivate the decommissioned
TALKS CONTINUE: Although an agreement has not been reached with Washington, lowering the tariff from 32 percent to 20 percent is still progress, the vice premier said Taiwan would strive for a better US tariff rate in negotiations, with the goal being not just lowering the current 20-percent tariff rate, but also securing an exemption from tariff stacking, Vice Premier Cheng Li-chiun (鄭麗君) said yesterday. Cheng made the remarks at a news conference at the Executive Yuan explaining the new US tariffs and the government’s plans for supporting affected industries. US President Donald Trump on July 31 announced a new tariff rate of 20 percent on Taiwan’s exports to the US starting on Thursday last week, and the Office of Trade Negotiations on Friday confirmed that it
RSS