Hong Kong man to enter plea under new security law over ‘seditious’ bus graffiti next month, as lawyer hints at ‘no trial’
Hong Kong Free Press
A Hong Kong man accused of writing “seditious” graffiti on bus seats is set to indicate his plea next month in the city’s third case under a new security law. His lawyer has told the court he did not expect it to go to trial.
Chung Man-kit appeared before Chief Magistrate Victor So at the West Kowloon Magistrates Courts on Thursday afternoon.
The 29-year-old has been detained for almost two months pending trial since he first appeared in court on June 25. He faces three counts of “doing with a seditious intention an act or acts that had a seditious intention” and two counts of “destroying or damaging property.”
Police have accused Chung 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, colloquially known as Article 23.
Separate to the 2020 Beijing-enacted security law, the homegrown Safeguarding National Security Ordinance targets treason, insurrection, sabotage, external interference, sedition, theft of state secrets and espionage. It allows for pre-charge detention of to up to 16 days, and suspects’ access to lawyers may be restricted, with penalties involving up to life in prison. Article 23 was shelved in 2003 amid mass protests, remaining taboo for years. But, on March 23, 2024, it was enacted having been fast-tracked and unanimously approved at the city’s opposition-free legislature.
The law has been criticised by rights NGOs, Western states and the UN as vague, broad and “regressive.” Authorities, however, cited perceived foreign interference and a constitutional duty to “close loopholes” after the 2019 protests and unrest.
Chung was said to have written statements on the back of Citybus seats between March 23 and April 21 with the intention of bringing “a Chinese citizen, Hong Kong permanent resident or a person in Hong Kong into hatred, contempt or disaffection against the fundamental system of the state established by the constitution of the People’s Republic of China.”
Prosecutor Vincent Lee told the handpicked national security judge on Thursday that the prosecution had completed gathering evidence and was ready for Chung to submit a plea.
But Chung’s representative, barrister Steven Kwan, requested an adjournment citing a “discussion” between the defence and the prosecution on the plea. It was likely that no trial would be needed, the counsel said.
“The discussion is in motion… I am confident that the end result will be no trial is needed,” Kwan said in Cantonese.
So eventually adjourned the case to September 19. He also asked the defence to file any written mitigation submission by September 9 if no trial were needed.
Chung was the third person charged under Article 23, which raised the maximum penalty for sedition from two years of imprisonment to seven years.
As of August 1, 301 people had been arrested in “cases involving suspected acts or activities that endanger national security” since the first national security law came into effect, including those arrested under the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance.
The Security Bureau has refused to provide separate figures for arrests and prosecutions under the Article 23 legislation. Revealing such information could have an impact on operational deployment, it said.
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