[ad_1]
HONG KONG: A teenage activist from Hong Kong was charged with secession on Thursday (October 29), the first public political figure to be prosecuted under a comprehensive new national security law that Beijing imposed on the city.
Tony Chung, 19, appeared in court on charges of secession, money laundering and conspiracy to post seditious content, two days after being arrested in a Hong Kong coffee shop outside the US consulate.
Student Localism, an independence group Chung was involved in before the security law was passed, said he and two other former members were arrested on Tuesday.
The group dissolved its Hong Kong network shortly before Beijing covered the city with its new security law in late June, but it has kept its international chapters.
The legislation prohibited a number of new crimes, including the expression of political opinions such as defending independence or greater autonomy for Hong Kong.
Police subsequently confirmed the three arrests, saying they were linked to an ongoing investigation into the group for allegedly “inciting secession”, one of the new crimes against national security.
All three were first arrested for that crime in late July, but were released on bail.
Beijing imposed its new security law in Hong Kong in June after the huge and often violent protests last year, and Chung was the first public figure arrested under it.
AWAY BY UNIDENTIFIED MEN
Chung was taken from a cafeteria in front of the consulate by plainclothes policemen on Tuesday.
According to a statement from a previously unknown group calling itself “Friends of Hong Kong,” its members witnessed four men enter the cafeteria in front of the consulate at 8.15am local time and arrest Chung.
Dashcam footage obtained by AFP from a car parked in front of the building at the time showed three men in surgical masks escorting another man in a dark T-shirt who appeared to have his hands behind his back.
The Friends of Hong Kong member told AFP that the clothes the escorted man was wearing matched what Chung was wearing that morning.
