Hong Kong independent bookseller Pong Yat-ming and three of his staff have reportedly been arrested on suspicion of selling seditious titles, including a biography of jailed media mogul Jimmy Lai.
Local media reported on Tuesday evening, national security police arrested a man and three women on suspicion of “knowingly selling a publication that has a seditious purpose,” an offense under Hong Kong’s national security law, the National Security Protection Ordinance, known locally as Article 23.
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Citing anonymous sources, reports said police also raided Pong’s Sham Shui Po bookstore, Book Punch, and seized rebel publications, including Lai’s biography 2024. The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai became a billionaire, Hong Kong’s biggest dissident and China’s most feared criticwritten by Mark Clifford, a former director of media conglomerate Lai’s Next Digital.
The offense carries a maximum sentence of seven years behind bars – 10 years if the offender is found to have collaborated with an outside force.
In an emailed response to the HKFP inquiry on Tuesday, a police spokesman said the force “will take action according to the current circumstances and in accordance with the law”.
‘Sudden incident’
The bookshop’s gate was closed when HKFP arrived around 5pm, with a Chinese-language notice taped to it that read: “Closed for a day due to an unexpected incident. Apologies for the inconvenience.”
Later, at around 5:20 p.m., HKFP saw a woman wearing an apricot colored T-shirt accompanied by a black seven-seater vehicle parked outside the Book Punch building. She went upstairs to the bookstore, accompanied by two men and a woman wearing what appeared to be police cordons.
Security law
Lai was sentenced to 20 years in prison last month for foreign collaboration and sedition – the heaviest sentence yet imposed under Beijing’s national security law.
Separated from Beijing 2020 approval security lawadults at home Maintaining the National Security Ordinance targets treason, sedition, sabotage, foreign interference, rebellion, theft of state secrets and espionage. It allows for DETENTION up to 16 days, and suspects’ access to lawyers may be limited, with penalties including up to life imprisonment. Article 23 was removed in 2003 amid mass protests, which remained taboo for years. But, on March 23, 2024, he was approved to be accelerated and passed unanimously in the city legislature without opposition.
The law has has been criticized by rights NGOs, western countries AND UN as vague, broad and “regressive”. Authorities, however, cited perceived foreign interference and a constitutional duty to “close loopholes” after 2019 protests and riots.
