HONG KONG (Reuters) – Hong Kong police have arrested four people aged 16-21 for alleged crimes under the city’s new national security law, the first of those arrests outside of street protests since the legislation entered effective a month ago.
Reporters take photos and videos of a police vehicle driving inside a station where members of the Hong Kong independence group arrested by the national security unit are detained in Hong Kong, China on July 29, 2020. REUTERS / Tyrone Siu
At a press conference shortly before midnight Wednesday, a police spokesman said the three men and one woman, all students, were suspected of being involved in an online group that vowed to use all means to fight. by an independent Hong Kong.
“We arrested him for … subversion and for organization and also incitement (of) secession,” said Li Kwai-wah, superintendent of police in the department of national security.
“They wanted to unite all the independent groups in Hong Kong to promote Hong Kong’s independence.”
China views Hong Kong as an “inalienable” part of the country, making calls for independence anathema to leaders of the Beijing Communist Party.
Police said some mobile phones, computers and documents were seized in the operation.
Beijing imposed contentious legislation in its freest city just before midnight on June 30, punishing what it broadly defines as secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with foreign forces with up to life in prison.
Activists in Hong Kong were quick to close or rename social media accounts that could breach the new security law before it was imposed. Police said all four were suspected of posting content that violated the law in July.
Human Rights Watch condemned the arrests and urged governments to impose targeted sanctions on Chinese and Hong Kong government officials responsible for the new law.
“The misuse of this draconian law makes it clear that the goal is to silence dissent, not to protect national security,” said Sophie Richardson, China director of Human Rights Watch.
The law has been condemned by some Western governments, business leaders and human rights groups who say it represents the latest move by Beijing to tighten its grip on the former British colony.
Beijing says the law is crucial to plug gaps in national security defenses exposed by months of sometimes violent anti-government protests that rocked the city in the past year.
Authorities in Beijing and Hong Kong say the law will be used to attack only a minority of “troublemakers.”
In a Facebook post, the Initiative Independence Party said that four former members of Studentlocalism, an independence group that dissolved before the new law went into effect, had been arrested on suspicion of violating articles 20 and 21 of the legislation that includes incite secession. Bail was denied.
Police did not name the suspects, but local media and online publications said Tony Chung, a former Studentlocalism convenor, was among those arrested.
Critics of the security legislation fear it will crush far-reaching freedoms not seen on the continent, including freedom of expression, which was guaranteed to Hong Kong for 50 years when it returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
Like student localism, many anti-government groups disbanded just before the law went into effect, from the Hong Kong National Front for independence to the Democrat for democracy, led by young activist Joshua Wong.
Hundreds of small stores have removed protest slogans from their walls, while publishers have begun to censor or even reject books they fear the authorities may consider subversive.
Reports by Joyce Zhou, Carol Mang, Yanni Chow and Jessie Pang; Written by Anne Marie Roantree; Edition by Lincoln Feast and Michael Perry
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