An unemployed 27-year-old man who was arrested for wearing a T-shirt with a protest slogan has become the first person to be convicted under Hong Kong’s newest national security legislation. Chu Kai-pong could be jailed for up to 10 years after he pleaded guilty on Monday to “doing acts with seditious intent” by wearing a T-shirt with the slogan “Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of our Times”.
Mr Chu was also wearing a face mask with the letters FDNOL, an abbreviation of another slogan from the 2019 pro-democracy protests, “five demands, not one less” when he was arrested at a railway station on June 12th. On that date in 2019, police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at 40,000 demonstrators outside Hong Kong’s government headquarters.
[ Hong Kong judgment articulates very expansive definition of seditionOpens in new window ]
New national security legislation introduced by the Hong Kong government earlier this year increased the maximum sentence for sedition from two years to seven but it can be raised to 10 years if the defendant is found to be in collusion with foreign forces. The British colonial-era offence of sedition remained on Hong Kong’s statute books after the city was returned to China in 1997 but it was not used until 2020 when a crackdown on political dissent began with the imposition by Beijing of a National Security Law.
Almost every trial under the National Security Law has ended in a conviction in non-jury courts with judges chosen by the government. Former legislators, academics and journalists are among those who have been jailed since the crackdown, which has snuffed out political opposition in Hong Kong.
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Mr Chu’s conviction came as Beijing released an American Christian pastor who had been detained for almost two decades on fraud charges his family claimed were trumped up. The state department in Washington said that David Lin (68) had arrived back in the United States.
“We welcome David Lin’s release from prison in the People’s Republic of China. He has returned to the United States and now gets to see his family for the first time in nearly 20 years,” said a state department spokesperson.
Mr Lin, an evangelical Christian, started travelling to China in the 1990s and he became involved in the underground house church movement that held religious gatherings in private homes. Protestantism is one of five official religions recognised in China but only within the Three-Self Patriotic Movement and the China Christian Council.
Mr Lin was arrested in 2006 and accused of contract fraud in connection with an attempt to build an unapproved church ahead of the 2008 Olympic Games. He was sentenced to life in prison but his sentence was steadily reduced and he was due to be released in December 2029.
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