The convictions are the latest to use a colonial-era sedition offense that authorities have developed alongside a new national security law to stamp out dissent. Prosecutors said the animals were metaphors for Hong Kong residents and mainland Chinese respectively, and were intended to incite hatred towards the latter. The defense argued that the content of the books was open to interpretation and that they did not call for armed rebellion against the government. But in his verdict, Judge Kwok Wai-kin, who sits on a panel of national security judges selected by the city’s chief, wrote that the books were written in a way to guide readers’ minds and that the publishers did not recognize The Beijing’s rule over Hong Kong. “The seditious intent emanates not only from the words, but from the forbidden effects the words are intended to produce in the minds of children,” Kwok wrote. “The children will be convinced that the PRC [People’s Republic of China] The government comes to Hong Kong with the evil intention of taking away their home and destroying their happy life without them doing it.” The case involved three children’s picture books published by the now-defunct Hong Kong General Association of Speech-Language Therapists in 2020 and 2021. One of the books, titled 12 Warriors of Sheep Village, appears to refer to 12 protesters from Hong Kong who tried to flee by speedboat to Taiwan but were intercepted by Chinese law enforcement in August 2020. The book depicts 12 sheep who must leave their village by boat after a battle with invading wolves, only to be captured at sea and imprisoned. The five accused – Lai Man-king, Melody Yeung, Sidney Ng, Samuel Chan and Fong Tsz-ho, all in their 20s – have been held without bail since last July. Ah To (not his real name), a political cartoonist who settled in the UK after the national security laws were introduced in June 2020, said the verdict caused him distress. “So-called subversive publishing is a speech crime, it’s a bad law that has long been abolished in the UK,” he told the Guardian. He said it would be difficult for artists in Hong Kong to judge whether their creations could be considered disturbing because the criteria were subjective. Archie Bland and Nimo Omer take you to the top stories and what they mean, free every weekday morning Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Amnesty International called for the immediate release of the five, saying the use of riot laws was a “brazen act of repression”. He said: “Writing children’s books is not a crime and trying to educate children about recent events in Hong Kong’s history does not constitute an attempt to incite rebellion.”
