Chu Kai-pong is the primary individual to be convicted beneath Article 23, the China-ruled metropolis’s powerful new nationwide safety regulation.
A Hong Kong man has been sentenced to 14 months in jail for carrying a T-shirt and a masks with protest slogans deemed “seditious”, the primary individual to be convicted beneath the town’s powerful new national security law.
Chu Kai-pong, 27, was sentenced on Thursday on the West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts, having pleaded guilty earlier within the week to 1 depend of “doing acts with seditious intention”, an offence carrying a most penalty of 10 years in jail beneath the brand new laws, referred to as Article 23.
Chu was arrested for carrying a T-shirt studying “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our occasions” and a yellow masks printed with “FDNOL” – shorthand for an additional pro-democracy slogan, “5 calls for, not one much less” – on June 12, a date marking the fifth anniversary of the town’s enormous pro-democracy protests in 2019.
The 2019 protest motion was essentially the most concerted problem to the Hong Kong authorities for the reason that former British colony returned to Chinese language rule in 1997. It waned due to widespread arrests, the exile of democracy activists, the COVID-19 pandemic and China’s imposition of an earlier safety regulation in 2020.
Referring to the 2019 protests, Chief Justice of the Peace Victor So – a decide handpicked by the federal government to listen to nationwide safety circumstances – mentioned on Thursday that Chu “took benefit of a symbolic day with the intention to reignite the concepts behind the unrest”.
In January, the decide had sentenced Chu to 3 months in jail for carrying an identical T-shirt on the airport and possessing publications deemed seditious. He famous that Chu’s “subsequent act” confirmed the “deterrent impact of his earlier sentence was inadequate”.
Quelling dissent
The sedition offence was created beneath British colonial rule, which led to 1997, however was seldom used till Hong Kong authorities revived it in 2020 after the protests.
With the protests quashed, China imposed a nationwide safety regulation on the town in mid-2020 to quell additional dissent.
The new national security law – the Safeguarding Nationwide Safety Ordinance, also called Article 23 – got here into drive in March.
The revised regulation augments the offence of sedition to incorporate inciting hatred towards China’s communist management, upping its jail sentence to a most penalty of 10 years if the sedition is performed in collusion with an “exterior drive”.
Critics, together with Western nations resembling the USA, say Article 23 will additional erode freedoms and silence dissent in Hong Kong – a finance hub as soon as thought of one of many freest territories in China.
As of this month, 303 individuals have been arrested beneath the 2 safety legal guidelines, with 176 prosecuted and 160 convicted.
