A Hong Kong man was jailed yesterday for “seditious” posts on social media, becoming the third person to be imprisoned under a new National Security Law in the span of two days.
Au Kin-wai (區健威), 58, was sentenced to 14 months behind bars after he pleaded guilty to publishing 239 seditious posts on Facebook, YouTube and X, a court document said.
Chief Magistrate Victor So (蘇惠德) said that Au’s posts were a “clear challenge to national sovereignty” and that his calls to revolution threatened national security.
Photo: Reuters
The defense had argued that some of Au’s social media accounts had fewer than 20 followers and that the unemployed man was seeking validation instead of trying to incite anyone.
While sedition has been an offense in Hong Kong since the British colonial period, it was rarely used until authorities revived it in the wake of massive protests in 2019 advocating democracy.
After Beijing imposed a National Security Law on the territory in 2020 to quell the protests, Hong Kong in March passed a second, tougher security law colloquially known as “Article 23,” which expanded the sedition offense.
Under Article 23, the maximum jail term for sedition was increased from two years to seven.
In his posts, Au had called for Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee (李家超) to resign, and derided the Chinese Communist Party as being “synonymous with lies,” media reported.
Au “intended to bring others into hatred and contempt against the Hong Kong government and law enforcement agencies, resulting in social rift and division,” So wrote in his ruling.
So — who is among the judges handpicked by Hong Kong’s leader to try national security cases — was also responsible for the two sedition jailings on Thursday, in which one man was handed a 14-month sentence for wearing a T-shirt with protest slogans.
Chu Kai-pong (諸啟邦) earlier pleaded guilty to having seditiously worn a T-shirt with the protest slogan “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times.”
So later sentenced another Hong Kong man, Chung Man-kit (鍾文傑), 29, to 10 months in prison in a separate case for writing slogans advocating Hong Kong independence and “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times” on the back of bus seats in March and April.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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