Hong Kong customs staff to receive training to stop items seen as risk to national security from entering city

Hong Kong Free Press

Hong Kong’s customs chief has said authorities will step up measures to prevent items threatening national security from entering the city, following the recent enactment of new security legislation.

Commissioner of Customs and Excise Louise Ho said in an interview with Cable TV on Saturday that the agency would revise its guidelines and step up training for frontline staff to better identify articles that could endanger national security.

When asked whether Apple Daily newspapers or books on military affairs would be considered seditious publications, Ho said it depended on the person’s intention.

“Only if a visitor has no reasonable defence for [carrying] a publication that may be seditious would we notify law enforcement departments,” Ho said in Cantonese.

Asked whether customs would write up a list of publications that were banned or regarded as “soft resistance,” Ho said there was no specific definition of “soft resistance.”

“I think we should rely on internal training to continuously convey the latest situation to frontline staff so they can understand how to handle the latest situations regarding national security,” she added.

Apple Daily’s final edition dated June 24, 2021. File photo: Kelly Ho/HKFP.

Ho said that while there the city does not have explicit restrictions on the import and export of publications, locals and visitors were advised to understand the customs requirements and avoid bringing in items that could breach laws.

Article 23

Ho’s comments came weeks after Hong Kong passed new security legislation, an obligation under Article 23 of the city’s Basic Law. The law targets five types of offences – treason, insurrection, sabotage, external interference, and theft of state secrets and espionage.

International rights groups and governments have expressed concerns that it may further erode freedoms in the city, although authorities have said the legislation was necessary to plug “loopholes” left by Beijing’s national security law, enacted in June 2020 after months-long protests and unrest.

The customs chief said during the interview that the homegrown security law and the Beijing-imposed national security law were complementary.

sedition sheep — A page from a picture book produced by the General Union of Hong Kong Speech Therapists. Photo: Kelly Ho/HKFP.

Last year, a Hong Kong man was arrested over importing children’s books that had been deemed “seditious” in an earlier court ruling. The books – featuring sheep and wolves – were said to be filled with “distorted ideas” intending to incite hatred among the local and Chinese governments.

The man pleaded guilty and was jailed for four months under the sedition law.

The case marked the first time that a charge relating to the import of seditious publications has been laid since the passing of the Beijing-imposed national security law. Previously, most charges under the sedition law have been linked to people publishing “seditious words” on social media.

Separately, a man was jailed for three months over wearing a “seditious” t-shirt at the airport. He was arrested near a boarding gate at the Hong Kong International Airport last November, after he was seen wearing a t-shirt with a protest slogan printed on it that had been ruled capable of inciting secession – an offence under Beijing’s security law.