Hong Kong’s national security police have arrested two men for possessing children’s books deemed seditious by the authorities — in the latest of a string of moves that underlines the state of civil freedoms in the territory.
The two men, aged 38 and 50, were arrested and detained after police and customs officers searched their homes and offices, and found copies of “seditious publications” that allegedly “incited hatred or contempt” against the Chinese and Hong Kong governments and the judiciary, police said in a news release.
The books were “seditious publications that could incite others into using violence and disobeying the law,” police said, adding that they were related to a concluded sedition trial.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The Chinese-language Mingbao daily reported that the publications were sent from the UK to Hong Kong.
They included several copies of illustrated children’s books in a series that portrayed Hong Kongers during the 2019 unrest as sheep trying to defend their village from wolves, the newspaper said, calling it an apparent reference to the Chinese authorities.
The pair have been released on bail, but must report to police next month, the newspaper quoted police as saying on Wednesday.
The books were ruled by a court as seditious in a high-profile trial last year, in which five speech therapists were jailed for 19 months for “conspiring to publish, distribute and display three books with seditious intent.”
Police at the time warned parents to destroy the books because they were “too radical, and instilled in children the ideas to confront and oppose the government.”
The convictions used a colonial-era sedition offense that authorities have deployed alongside the Beijing-imposed National Security Law to stamp out dissent.
One title, The 12 Heroes of Sheep Village, apparently refers to a failed attempt by 12 protesters to flee Hong Kong in 2020. They were caught and tried in China for illegally crossing the border.
The arrests of the two men are believed to be the first time that police have detained citizens for possessing books deemed “seditious” by the authorities.
It prompted widespread unease, as a senior national security police official at the time of the speech therapists’ arrests in 2021 said that he “could not see a problem” with merely possessing those publications.
However, Wednesday’s police news release said “the possession of seditious publications is a serious crime” that could lead to one year of imprisonment in initial convictions and two years in subsequent convictions.
Sedition cases are overseen by designated national security judges, and defendants charged under the colonial-era legislation also face a more stringent national security bail assessment.
The sedition law outlaws incitement to violence, disaffection and other offenses against the Hong Kong government.
National security police made several arrests over the past week.
A 23-year-old woman was arrested on Wednesday for allegedly publishing messages online inciting Hong Kong independence.
Veteran labor rights advocate Elizabeth Tang (鄧燕娥) was arrested on Thursday last week, suspected of “colluding with foreign forces” after returning from Britain to visit her husband, former Hong Kong lawmaker Lee Cheuk-yan (李卓人), in prison.
The National Security Law, imposed by China to stamp out the months-long and sometimes violent anti-government protests that started in 2019, lays out penalties as severe as life imprisonment for crimes including secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces.
The US and the Philippines plan to announce new sites as soon as possible for an expanded Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), which gives the Western power access to military bases in the Southeast Asian country. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr last month granted the US access to four military bases, on top of five existing locations under the 2014 EDCA, amid China’s increasing assertiveness regarding the South China Sea and Taiwan. Speaking at the Basa Air Base in Manila, one of the existing EDCA sites, US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall said the defense agreements between the two countries
‘DUAL PURPOSE’: Upgrading the port is essential for the Solomon Islands’ economy and might not be military focused, but ‘it is not about bases, it is about access,’ an analyst said The Solomon Islands has awarded a multimillion-dollar contract to a Chinese state company to upgrade an international port in Honiara in a project funded by the Asian Development Bank, a Solomon Islands official said yesterday. China Civil Engineering Construction Co (CCECC) was the only company to submit a bid in the competitive tender, Solomon Islands Ministry of Infrastructure Development official Mike Qaqara said. “This will be upgrading the old international port in Honiara and two domestic wharves in the provinces,” Qaqara said. Responding to concerns that the port could be deepened for Chinese naval access, he said there would be “no expansion.” The Solomon
CONFLICTING ACCOUNTS: The US destroyer’s routine operations in the South China Sea would have ‘serious consequences,’ the defense ministry said China yesterday threatened “serious consequences” after the US Navy sailed a destroyer around the disputed Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島) in the South China Sea for the second day in a row, in a move Beijing claimed was a breach of its sovereignty and security. The warning came amid growing tensions between China and the US in the region, as Washington pushes back at Beijing’s growingly assertive posture in the South China Sea, a strategic waterway it claims virtually in its entirety. On Thursday, after the US sailed the USS Milius guided-missile destroyer near the Paracel Islands, China said its navy and
Seven stories above a shop floor hawking cheap perfume and nylon underwear, Thailand’s “shopping mall gorilla” sits alone in a cage — her home for 30 years despite a reignited row over her captivity. Activists around the world have long campaigned for the primate to be moved from Pata Zoo, on top of a Bangkok mall, with singer Cher and actor Gillian Anderson adding their voices in 2020. However, the family who owns Bua Noi — whose name translates as “little lotus” — have resisted public and government pressure to relinquish the critically endangered animal. The gorilla has lived at Pata for more