HONG KONG: A man from Hong Kong has been sentenced to 14 months’ jail on sedition charges. He pleaded guilty to sedition for wearing a T-shirt with a protest slogan.
The offence of sedition that he was charged with for wearing the T-shirt is part of the new security law that was passed in March called Article 23.
Article 23 provides for closed-door trials and gives the police the right to detain suspects for up to 16 days without any charge.
The offender, Chu Kai-pong, who is 27 years old, was arrested at a subway station in June. The T-shirt he was wearing had the phrase “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times”. He also had a mask that read “FDNOL”, which stands for “Five demands, not one less.”
Both slogans were often heard during the anti-government demonstrations in 2019.
According to a Reuters report, Chu told police that the T-shirt was meant to remind people of the protests. He had also been jailed for three months in an earlier incident for wearing a similar T-shirt and having offensive items in his possession.
Hong Kong man jailed for ‘sedition’ over T-shirt protest https://t.co/U0JyoclCTB
— Standard News (@standardnews) September 19, 2024
Chu has been in custody since June 14. Earlier in the week, he pleaded guilty to one count of “doing an act with a seditious intention.”
Chief Magistrate Victor So pronounced his judgment on Thursday, saying that Chu had shown no remorse after his previous conviction.
So’s conviction and sentencing have been denounced by human rights groups all over the world. Amnesty International China’s director Sarah Brooks called it “a blatant attack on the right to freedom of expression”. She called out Article 23, saying that it should be repealed.
The sentencing comes after another watershed ruling last month when two journalists were found guilty of sedition. The duo led the pro-democratic newspaper Stand News. This was the first sedition case against Hong Kong journalists since Hong Kong’s handover from Britain to China in 1997.