Hong Kong national security police have arrested and charged a 22-year-old man under Article 23, the city’s homegrown national security law, after he allegedly published online posts with “seditious intentions.”
The man was arrested on Monday in Kowloon, the force said in a statement released Wednesday. He was charged with one count of “knowingly publishing publications that had a seditious intention.”
The police statement said that “the arrested man was suspected of repeatedly publishing posts with seditious intentions on online social platforms, with content provoking hatred, contempt or disaffection against the fundamental system of the state.”
He appeared before the West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts on Wednesday afternoon. According to the legal document, the man is named Chan Ho-hin and works as a waiter.
According to the charge sheet, Chan published seditious posts on Instagram and X, formerly known as Twitter, between June 27 last year and April 28 this year, with “the intent to bring people into hatred, contempt or disaffection against” Hong Kong and Beijing.
Earlier this month, Chow Kim-ho – a former member of the League of Social Democrats, a pro-democracy party – was jailed for one year over posting 145 seditious comments on three social media platforms under the city’s homegrown security law.
Separate from 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 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.
