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.
‘HYANGDO’: A South Korean lawmaker said there was no credible evidence to support rumors that Kim Jong-un has a son with a disability or who is studying abroad South Korea’s spy agency yesterday said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s daughter, Kim Ju-ae, who last week accompanied him on a high-profile visit to Beijing, is understood to be his recognized successor. The teenager drew global attention when she made her first official overseas trip with her father, as he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Analysts have long seen her as Kim’s likely successor, although some have suggested she has an older brother who is being secretly groomed as the next leader. The South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) “assesses that she [Kim Ju-ae]
In the week before his fatal shooting, right-wing US political activist Charlie Kirk cheered the boom of conservative young men in South Korea and warned about a “globalist menace” in Tokyo on his first speaking tour of Asia. Kirk, 31, who helped amplify US President Donald Trump’s agenda to young voters with often inflammatory rhetoric focused on issues such as gender and immigration, was shot in the neck on Wednesday at a speaking event at a Utah university. In Seoul on Friday last week, he spoke about how he “brought Trump to victory,” while addressing Build Up Korea 2025, a conservative conference
DEADLOCK: Putin has vowed to continue fighting unless Ukraine cedes more land, while talks have been paused with no immediate results expected, the Kremlin said Russia on Friday said that peace talks with Kyiv were on “pause” as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin still wanted to capture the whole of Ukraine. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump said that he was running out of patience with Putin, and the NATO alliance said it would bolster its eastern front after Russian drones were shot down in Polish airspace this week. The latest blow to faltering diplomacy came as Russia’s army staged major military drills with its key ally Belarus. Despite Trump forcing the warring sides to hold direct talks and hosting Putin in Alaska, there
North Korea has executed people for watching or distributing foreign television shows, including popular South Korean dramas, as part of an intensifying crackdown on personal freedoms, a UN human rights report said on Friday. Surveillance has grown more pervasive since 2014 with the help of new technologies, while punishments have become harsher — including the introduction of the death penalty for offences such as sharing foreign TV dramas, the report said. The curbs make North Korea the most restrictive country in the world, said the 14-page UN report, which was based on interviews with more than 300 witnesses and victims who had
RSS