HK activist arrested ahead of planned Olympics protest

HONG KONG: A veteran Hong Kong activist was arrested for “incitement to subversion” on Friday ahead of a planned protest against Beijing’s hosting of the Winter Olympics, hours before the opening ceremony was due to kick off.

China has embarked on a crackdown in Hong Kong following massive and at times violent pro-democracy protests, imposing a sweeping national security law that criminalised much dissent.

Wen Wei Po, a newspaper that answers to Beijing’s Liaison Office in Hong Kong, said Koo Sze-yiu was arrested on Friday morning by national security police.

A senior police source confirmed to AFP that Koo had been detained for “incitement to subversion” and that four others had been taken in to assist with their investigation.

The arrest comes days after Hong Kong journalists received a media invitation bearing Koo’s name saying he was planning to protest on Friday outside Beijing’s Liaison Office in Hong Kong ahead of the start of the Olympics.

“Many political activists and Hong Kong citizens have been jailed and cannot spend Lunar New Year with their families because of abuses of Hong Kong’s national security law,” read the invitation, dated Jan 31.

“The central government is only concerned with hosting the Winter Olympics to whitewash the situation, and does not care about miscarriages of justice in Hong Kong,” it said.

Koo could not be reached for comment to confirm if he had organised a protest, which was slated to be held at 10 am Friday morning.

The septuagenarian activist, who is terminally ill with cancer, has been jailed multiple times — most notably in 2013 for burning China’s flag to protest against Beijing’s treatment of dissidents on the Chinese mainland.