Hong Kong speech therapists’ union ordered to hand over HK$116,000 assets on national security grounds
Hong Kong Free Press
A union of Hong Kong speech therapists whose board members were jailed for sedition two years ago has been ordered to hand over HK$116,000 in assets after the city’s justice department said the union’s funds had been used to endanger national security.
High Court judge Andrew Chan, one of the judges hand-picked to preside over national security cases, handed down the order to seize the union’s funds, saying he was familiar with the union’s case as he had dealt with bail proceedings for its members.
The union’s liquidator, listed as the respondent in the hearing, was not represented in court on Thursday.
Five executive committee members of the General Union of Hong Kong Speech Therapists were sentenced to 19 months in prison two years ago after they were found guilty of publishing illustrated books that “brainwashed” young readers.
The books in question, about sheep and wolves, were said to have allegorised the 2019 anti-extradition bill unrest, the detention of 12 Hong Kong fugitives by the Chinese authorities, and a strike staged by Hong Kong medics at the start of the Covid-19 outbreak.
National security risks
The five unionists were found guilty under the city’s colonial-era sedition law, which was replaced by new security legislation in March that raised the maximum penalty to 10 years in prison.
The Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, known locally as Article 23, targets treason, insurrection, sabotage, external interference, sedition, and theft of state secrets and espionage.
Publishing the “sheep village” children’s books and distributing them for free was the union’s most apparent instance of acts endangering national security, Senior Counsel Anthony Chan, representing the city’s Department of Justice, said on Tuesday. However, the union also engaged in other acts that posed national security risks, he added.
The justice department submitted that the union was set up for “political” purposes, to exert pressure on the government, and advocate for Hong Kong independence through unlawful means.
Chan also submitted that the union was involved in criminal activities that would endanger national security, citing chairperson Lorie Lai’s remarks in a 2020 interview that the union had set up a platform in schools, residential homes and hospitals to discuss issues posed by those in power.
Lai also said the trade union allowed members to “discover more evidence of totalitarianism, and connect the struggle to their own lives.”
The union’s registration was revoked in October 2021, around the time that dozens of civil society organisations began to disband following the onset of the Beijing-imposed security law.
The department cited the implementation rules for the national security law, which state that the Court of First Instance may issue an order to forfeit “offence related properties”
Judge Chan said he knew the case of the speech therapists “reasonably well” and handed down the forfeiture order for HK$116,000 after deducting about HK$50,000 in liquidation fees.
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