Hong Kong police raided a bookstore and arrested the owner and three staff members reportedly on suspicion of selling “seditious” publications, including Jimmy Lai’s biography.
Police on Tuesday raided the independent store in Sham Shui Po and arrested owner, Pong Yat-ming, and three staff members for selling copies of The Troublemaker, a biography of the incarcerated media tycoon, the Hong Kong television network TVB reported.
The biography was written by Mark Clifford, a former colleague who worked as the director of Next Digital, the parent company of the newspaper owned by Lai.
The booksellers were arrested for “knowingly selling seditious publications”, a charge that carries a maximum penalty of seven years in jail. The national security police also seized copies of other allegedly seditious books from the store Book Punch.
The 78-year-old billionaire was sentenced to 20 years in jail following a lengthy trial on charges of sedition, collusion with foreign forces, and conspiracy to publish seditious material under the National Security Law imposed by Beijing in 2020. The largest national security case in Hong Kong’s history was closely watched by Western countries, including the UK, of which Lai is a citizen.
A police spokesperson said the force “will take actions according to actual circumstances and in accordance with the law” without commenting directly on the arrests.
A notice pasted outside the door of the bookstore in Mandarin read: “Resting for a day due to emergency, sorry for the inconvenience.”
The author of the biography, The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became A Billionaire, Hong Kong’s Greatest Dissident and China‘s Most Feared Critic, Mark Clifford, said the arrest was part of a “continuing crackdown” on his work and threats against the bookstores that sold his work.
“It is a cruel irony that selling a biography of a man who is in jail for his activities as a journalist, for promoting free expression, would lead to sedition charges,” said Mr Clifford, the president of Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong (CFHK).
“It shows how far Hong Kong has fallen from its tradition of free expression and free speech that providing a book could be considered a national security offence”.
He said the arrest is a breach of China’s promises to the former British colony to provide a high degree of autonomy through the “one country, two systems” framework.
Hong Kong Free Press said it saw a woman being escorted from a seven‑seater vehicle parked outside the building housing Book Punch shortly after it was closed at 5pm, with a notice posted on its door. The woman was then taken to the upper floor of the bookstore by police officers.
It marks the latest incident of how Hong Kong authorities are increasingly using the Hong Kong national security law not just on political activism but also on businesses.
Under a local national security law, known as Article 23, sedition is punishable up to seven years in jail and a maximum of 10 years if the act involves collusion with an “external force”.
Beijing imposed broader and more sweeping national security legislation on the city in 2020, with Hong Kong and Chinese officials saying new laws were needed to bring stability after months of pro-democracy protests rocked the city in 2019.
In a further crackdown on dissent, the city government on Monday gazetted new amendments to the implementation rules of the Beijing-imposed law, which would allow customs officers to seize items that are deemed to have “seditious intention”.
The moves also mean police, with warrants from a magistrate, can now demand that people suspected of breaching the national security law provide mobile phone or computer passwords or face jail and a fine.
Bookseller Lam Wing-kee, most well known for his provision of politically related publications, was secretly arrested in 2015 for selling publications critical of the political elite in mainland China, sparking fears over his disappearance. After he was released following eight months of detention on the promise to return with customer data, Mr Wing-kee fled to Taiwan.
