A rights group yesterday warned that Hong Kong was becoming “increasingly dystopian” after a bookstore owner and his staff were reportedly arrested on suspicion of selling seditious publications, including a biography of jailed pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai (黎智英).
Pong Yat-ming (龐一鳴) and three employees of Book Punch (一拳書館) face allegations of selling seditious publications under Hong Kong’s 2024 national security law, local newspapers South China Morning Post, Ming Pao and broadcaster TVB reported on Tuesday, citing unnamed sources.
Officers searched the bookshop and seized materials, including The Toublemaker, a biography of Lai, who was last month sentenced to 20 years in prison for national security crimes.
Photo: AP
Human Rights Watch (HRW) yesterday said that “Hong Kong has become increasingly dystopian.”
“First, the authorities jailed the newspaper publisher, then they arrested the person selling books about him. Who’s next?” HRW Asia director Elaine Pearson said in a statement.
“It will be the ordinary people who suffer the consequences over time,” she added.
Police did not confirm the arrests, only saying that they “will take actions according to actual circumstances and in accordance with the law.” The bookstore did not immediately comment.
The store remained closed yesterday, with a notice outside its door saying: “Taking a day off due to an unexpected situation. Sorry for any inconvenience.”
Oxford Brookes University law lecturer Urania Chiu called the reported Book Punch case a “highly concerning development.”
“Given the broad and malleable definition of seditious intention, it is hard to say that anyone can have certainty about what is and is not seditious,” Chiu said.
Separately, officials on Tuesday ordered three companies linked to Lai’s now-shuttered newspaper, Apple Daily, to be removed from the city’s companies registry.
A government statement said the companies were dissolved and became “prohibited organizations,” warning that anyone associating with them would contravene the 2024 national security law.
Lai and the three newly deregistered companies — Apple Daily Ltd, Apple Daily Printing Ltd and AD Internet Ltd — were convicted in December of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces to endanger national security. They were also found guilty of conspiring with others to publish seditious materials under a separate sedition law.
The three companies last month were each fined more than HK$3 million (US$383,694).
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