Internet radio host to face sentence on Friday after admitting incitement to revolt against Beijing and Hong Kong government
- YouTube radio host admits conspiracy to commit sedition after he used shows to ask West to hit Hong Kong politicians with more sanctions
- District Court hears broadcaster Edmund Wan called for Hong Kong independence and resistance against Chinese Communist Party
An internet radio host who pleaded guilty under a colonial era sedition law to using his shows to incite revolution against Beijing and the Hong Kong government is to be sentenced on Friday.
The District Court heard on Thursday that Edmund Wan Yiu-Sing, who used the alias “Giggs”, broadcast 39 episodes of two online shows where he called for independence for Hong Kong and resistance against the city’s government and the Chinese Communist Party.
Judge Adriana Noelle Tse Ching, one of those hand-picked to preside over national security cases, said there was no question that calls for violence against the government were against the law and that lack of knowledge of the city’s 1938 sedition law could not be an excuse.
“Even if the sedition law was in one day found to be unconstitutional, so what?” she told the court. “No matter how one sees it, calling on others to use violence must be illegal. Everyone knows that.”
Tse was speaking after Wan, 54, admitted conspiracy to commit acts with seditious intention – an offence said by the city’s top court to endanger national security. It was only the second conviction of a media figure using the colonial-era sedition law in more than two decades.