Hong Kong police arrest six people for violating the city’s new national security law

HONG KONG – Hong Kong police arrested six people on Tuesday on suspicion of posting inflammatory social media posts, the first publicly known arrests under the city’s new national security law.

A police statement said a detained woman posted the messages anonymously on a social media site starting in April with the help of five other people.

“(They) incite hatred against the central government, the Hong Kong government and the city’s judicial authorities, and aim to incite Internet users to organize or participate in illegal activities at a later date,” the police statement said.

The statement did not provide any further details about the social media page or the content of the posts. Nor did it reveal the identities of the six people arrested, aged between 37 and 65.

The introduction of the new security law in March – four years after Beijing passed a similar law that effectively quelled public opposition – has heightened concerns about an erosion of freedoms in the city.

The new law, known locally as Article 23, expands the government’s power to deal with future challenges to its rule and punishes treason and sedition with up to life imprisonment.

Under the law, offenders guilty of sedition face harsher penalties than before. If convicted of seditious acts or uttering seditious words, they face a maximum prison sentence of seven years – previously the maximum sentence was two years.

Authorities searched the homes of five suspects and seized items, including electronic devices, that officials suspect were used to publish the inflammatory messages, police said.

When Britain returned Hong Kong to China in 1997, Beijing promised to preserve the city’s Western-style freedoms for 50 years. But since the 2020 law was introduced, Hong Kong authorities have severely restricted freedom of speech and assembly under the guise of safeguarding national security. Many activists have been arrested, silenced or forced into exile.

The governments of Beijing and Hong Kong say the law passed by China helped restore stability after huge anti-government protests in 2019.