Editing Hong Kong Sees First apos;seditious Publication apos; Jailings Since Handover

There has been a widespread crackdown on dissent in Hong Kong<br>  <br>Hong Kong's courts jailed two people for publishing seditious content on Monday, the first time the colonial-era law has been used to secure a conviction for printed content since the city's 1997 handover to China.<br> <br>Sedition is a throwback to Hong Kong's British colonial past but has been dusted off as authorities carry out a widespread crackdown on dissent in the wake of 2019's democracy protests.<br> <br>Multiple people -- including journalists, union members and a prominent radio DJ -- have been detained under the [https://www.wiklundkurucuk.com/turkey-citizenship-by-investment/index.php/2016/07/16/fewer-than-0-1-of-syrians-in-turkey-in-line-for-work-permits-3/ law firm turkey] and are facing upcoming trials.<br> <br>A woman last year was jailed for "conspiracy to commit a seditious act" over a pro-democracy chat group she ran which revealed personal details about police officers.<br> <br>But Monday's verdicts were the first seditious publication convictions since the return to Chinese rule.<br> <br>Kim Chiang Chung-sang, 41, a former property manager, was given eight months in jail for putting up posters outside a kindergarten and the city's High Court.<br> <br>The posters criticised the judiciary for convicting a man last year at the first trial under a national security law that Beijing imposed on Hong Kong to neuter dissent.<br> <br>Acting Chief Magistrate Peter Law said Chiang was "challenging the rule of law" and trying to "poison children quietly".<br> <br>In a separate case that also concluded on Monday, the District Court jailed former clerk Chloe Tso Suet-sum, 45, for over a year for asking a 17-year-old to design and print protests leaflets.<br> <br>Prosecutors said the leaflets contained slogans urging Hong Kong people to build their own army and nation, and also carried black bauhinia flowers, a symbol of the city's now crushed democracy movement.<br> <br>The 17-year-old, who AFP has chosen not to name, was sent to a [https://www.academia.edu/people/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=youth%20rehabilitation youth rehabilitation] centre, a step short of a custodial sentence where juveniles usually stay for two to five months.<br> <br>The defendants in both cases pleaded guilty, which normally results in a sentence reduction.<br> <br>Sedition [https://data.gov.uk/data/search?q=carries carries] up to two years in jail for a first offence.<br> <br>During colonial rule it was deployed against pro-Beijing media and leftist government critics who slammed it as a tool to suppress free speech.<br> <br>Now Chinese state media and Hong Kong's pro-Beijing press have embraced its use against the current government's critics.<br> <br>Police and prosecutors now regularly use sedition alongside the national security law to clamp down on political speech and views.<br> <br>It is treated like a national security crime which means those arrested are usually denied bail.<br> <br>In recent months sedition charges have been brought against pro-democracy unionists who produced euphemistic children's books about a sheep village defending itself from invading wolves, as well as journalists from now shuttered pro-democracy news outlets Apple Daily and StandNews.<br> <br>Ming Pao, a Chinese mainstream newspaper in Hong Kong, recently adding a disclaimer to its columns saying it had no intention of committing sedition when criticising government policy.<br>