HONG KONG: A Hong Kong man was jailed on Friday (Sep 20) for “seditious” posts on social media, becoming the third person to be imprisoned under a new national security law in the span of two days.
Au Kin-wai, 58, was sentenced to 14 months behind bars after he pleaded guilty to publishing 239 seditious posts on the platforms Facebook, YouTube and X, according to a court document.
Chief Magistrate Victor So said Au’s posts were a “clear challenge to national sovereignty” and that his calls to revolution threatened national security.
While sedition has been an offence in Hong Kong since the British colonial period, it was rarely used until authorities revived it in the wake of huge, sometimes violent pro-democracy protests in 2019.
After Beijing imposed a national security law on the finance hub in 2020 to quell the protests, Hong Kong in March passed a second, tougher security law colloquially known as “Article 23”, which expanded the sedition offence.
In his posts, Au had called for Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Hong Kong leader John Lee to resign, and derided the Chinese Communist Party as being “synonymous with lies”, according to media reports.
“(Au) intended to bring others into hatred and contempt against the Hong Kong government and law enforcement agencies, resulting in social rift and division,” Chief Magistrate So wrote in his ruling.
