29-year-old charged under Hong Kong’s new security law over ‘seditious’ bus graffiti
Hong Kong Free Press
A 29-year-old man has been charged with three counts of sedition under Hong Kong’s new security law over graffiti left on the back of bus seats.
The man was arrested in Tseung Kwan O by police officers from the national security department on Sunday for “doing with a seditious intention an act or acts that had a seditious intention,” according to a police statement on Tuesday. He also faces two counts of “destroying or damaging property.”
Police said he was suspected of “writing words with seditious intention on multiple occasions on the back of bus seats on different public buses in March and April” in contravention of the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance.
Enacted in March after it was fast-tracked through the opposition-free legislature, Hong Kong’s latest security law raised the maximum penalty for sedition from two years in jail to seven years, or 10 years if offenders were found to have colluded with an “external force” in the course of committing the crime.
The 29-year-old became the latest person to be charged under the new legislation, known colloquially as Article 23, after national security police made their first sedition arrests since its came into force on March 23. He is due to appear in court on Tuesday afternoon.
Eight people were arrested in late May and early June in connection with social media posts made on a Facebook page named “Chow Hang-tung Club,” including detained rights activist Chow, although none have yet been charged.
On June 14, Chu Kai-pong, 27, became the first person to be charged under Article 23, when he appeared in court to face one count of “doing with a seditious intention an act or acts that had a seditious intention.”
Chu was arrested while wearing a top and a mask printed with statements that were allegedly intended to incite hatred, contempt or disaffection against the “fundamental system of the state established by the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China.”
Last Friday, Au Kin-wai, 58, appeared in court over the publication of “seditious” statements on social media, allegedly involving the words “Revolution is no crime, to rebel is justified,” a slogan dating back to China’s Cultural Revolution. Au did not apply for bail and was taken into custody.
Separate to the national security law imposed by Beijing in 2020, the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance targets treason, insurrection, sabotage, external interference, sedition, theft of state secrets and espionage. An attempt to enact the law in 2003 was shelved after it prompted mass protests, but it was passed in less than two months in early 2024.
While officials said the legislation was needed to plug “loopholes” left by Beijing’s law, it has been widely criticised by Western governments, rights NGOs and the UN for being vague, broad and “regressive.”
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