HK arrests five on sedition charges

HONG KONG: Children’s books likening Hong Kong democracy activists to sheep pursued by wolves were at the centre of the city’s latest national security sweep, with five people arrested on suspicion of publishing seditious material.

Five members of the General Union of Hong Kong Speech Therapists, which has published books for children with political themes featuring cartoon sheep, were arrested on Thursday by the police’s national security department, local media including Oriental Daily newspaper and Cable TV reported. The police said they arrested two men and three women - all in their 20s and members of a local trade union - and froze union assets totalling HK$160,000 (US$20,600).

“The arrested persons are suspected of conspiring to publish, distribute, display or reproduce publications from the middle of last year to this year, with the intention of causing hatred, incitement to violence and the abuse of law by the public, especially young children, against the Hong Kong government and the Hong Kong judiciary,” the police said.

The arrests come as authorities increasingly use laws, including a national security

law enacted last year and a sedition law imposed during British rule, to jail members of the opposition. The police bureau created by the security law has used it to arrest at least 132 people, including activists, lawyers, journalists and academics. It has also arrested at least nine other people on allegations of seditious speech or publications.

While Hong Kong officials have said the security law targets only an “extremely small minority”, they have begun to use it to remove public library books and censor films.