Hong Kong police yesterday arrested an eighth person over social media posts about commemorating Beijing’s 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, the eve of the bloody incident’s 35th anniversary.
The arrest was the latest in a series of law enforcement actions taken since Tuesday last week against a group that was accused of publishing “seditious” online posts to “take advantage of an upcoming sensitive day.”
The group was the first detained under Hong Kong’s Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, the territory’s second national security law enacted in March following another security law imposed by Beijing in 2020.
Photo: AP
Police said the eighth person arrested was a 62-year-old man, who was suspected of committing an offense in connection with “seditious intention” — the same offense the first seven were arrested for last week. It carries a penalty of up to seven years in jail.
Among those arrested last week was Chow Hang-tung (鄒幸彤), a prominent democracy advocate who led the now-disbanded Hong Kong Alliance that once organized annual vigils to mark the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
Jailed since 2021, Chow is already serving a more than 30-month jail sentence over other charges, including unauthorized assembly for her attempt to publicly commemorate the Tiananmen Square Massacre anniversary.
Hong Kong’s security chief last week said that the group made online posts that “were trying to incite disaffection and distrust — and even hatred — against the central government, the Hong Kong government and the judiciary.”
Six of them have been released on bail and are subject to a “movement restriction order,” police said.
Hong Kong used to be the only place under China’s rule where public commemoration of Beijing’s deadly crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, was allowed.
The three-decade tradition has been banned since 2020, when Beijing imposed the first national security law on the territory to quell dissent following huge, and sometimes violent, pro-democracy protests the year before.
A university students’ publication axed its campaign to collect people’s recollections of the crackdown due to “factors we cannot resist,” a post on its social media page said on Saturday.
On Sunday, an independent bookstore on Instagram said that several police officers were around the premises for an hour, taking down names of customers, after its staff had put “5.35” — a coded reference to June 4 — on its window.
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