Five arrested over children’s books

At face value, they could not look more innocent — a set of children’s picture books featuring cartoon sheep in a rural idyll. But to Hong Kong’s police force there is no mistaking the real meaning behind stories such as Defenders of the Sheep Village. Police have arrested five people on sedition charges over the books, claiming that the wolves who chase the sheep in the stories are a thinly disguised allusion to China’s crackdown on Hong Kong’s freedoms. The two men and three women, all in their late 20s, were members of a speech therapists’ union that produced books for children. The charge carries a sentence of up to two years in prison for a first offence.