Six people arrested under Hong Kong’s new security law for ‘posting messages’ online

One of the arrested women is already in custody in a high-security prison for women, police said.

Security chief Chris Tang confirmed that the pre-trial patient is Chow Hang-tung, a prominent activist who has been in prison since 2021.

He also said that the Facebook page in question was the “Chow Hang-tung Club.”

Chow was the former chairman of the now-defunct Hong Kong Alliance, which organized an annual candlelight vigil in Hong Kong to commemorate the victims of June 4, 1989, when Beijing sent troops to Tiananmen Square to suppress calls for democracy.

Tuesday’s arrests came a week before the 35th anniversary of the event. The statement said the online posts “took advantage of an upcoming sensitive day.”

The online messages were “written with the aim of inciting hatred against the central government (Beijing), the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government and the judiciary, and inciting Internet users to later organize or participate in illegal activities.”

The six people – aged between 37 and 65 – are suspected of having “violated Section 24 of the National Security Ordinance, which states: ‘Offences related to seditious intent,'” the statement said, referring to the newly enacted law in Hong Kong.

These would be the first arrests of their kind under this law, commonly referred to as Article 23.

Article 23 came into force in March and provides for penalties of up to life imprisonment for five categories of crimes, including treason, sedition, espionage, sabotage and foreign interference.

In addition, the criminal offense of “sedition,” which dates back to the British colonial era, was expanded to include incitement to hatred against the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.

The law is the city’s second national security law – the first was imposed by Beijing in 2020 after it crushed huge, sometimes violent democracy protests.

Mayor John Lee said the second law was necessary to close the loopholes in the first and “prevent black-tie violence,” referring to the Hong Kong protests in 2019, which brought millions onto the streets at their peak.

The law’s harshest critics include the United States, the European Union, Japan and the United Kingdom. British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said the law would further undermine “the rights and freedoms” of people in the city.

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