Hong Kong Man Faces Jail For Sporting ‘Seditious’ T-shirt

“LIBERATE HONG KONG“: Chu Kai-pong becomes the first person convicted of sedition under the territory’s newly enacted, stricter national security law.

A 27-year-old man is facing a prison sentence of several years for sedition after pleading guilty to wearing a protest T-shirt that prosecutors argue violates Hong Kong’s recently implemented national security law.

Chu Kai-pong (諸啟邦) had previously been imprisoned for three months in January for sedition, a charge related to his possession of clothing and flags bearing protest slogans in his luggage and on his person.

Yesterday, he entered a guilty plea to one count of “doing acts with seditious intent.” This conviction represents the first instance in the territory where the new, stricter law has been applied.

One of the slogans on the T-shirt, “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times,” had been previously determined by a court to be “capable of inciting secession.”

Chu was arrested on June 12th – a date associated with the large-scale, sometimes violent pro-democracy protests of 2019 – for wearing a T-shirt bearing the aforementioned slogan and a yellow mask printed with “FDNOL,” an abbreviation of another slogan, “five demands, not one less.”

The court heard that Chu informed police he interpreted the slogan as a call for Hong Kong to return to British rule. He further stated that he chose the outfit to remind the public of the 2019 protests, during which the phrase was commonly used by pro-democracy demonstrators.

Chief magistrate Victor So convicted Chu after he pleaded guilty and noted that two other charges of failing to produce an ID card and loitering were dropped. Chu has been in custody for three months and will be sentenced on Thursday.

Hong Kong enacted a stricter national security law in March, the second such law following the one imposed by Beijing in mid-2020 after suppressing protests. The revised law strengthened the offense of sedition – a colonial-era offense – to include inciting hatred of China’s communist leadership and increased its maximum jail sentence from two to seven years. It also punishes five categories of crimes: treason, insurrection, sabotage, espionage and external interference.

Chu’s lawyer argued that the maximum sentence he could receive would be two years. Sedition was created under British colonial rule, which ended in 1997, and was rarely used until Hong Kong authorities revived it in 2020 and charged more than 50 people and four companies.

Critics, including Western nations such as the US, say the new security law would further erode freedoms and silence dissent in Hong Kong. However, authorities defended the law as necessary to fulfill a “constitutional responsibility,” comparing it to a “reliable lock to prevent someone from breaking into [our] home.”

As of last month, 301 people had been arrested under the two security laws, with 176 prosecuted and 157 convicted.