President of dissolved Hong Kong party pleads guilty to violating national security law through seditious social media posts

The president of the now-dissolved Hong Kong Independence Party has pleaded guilty to endangering national security by posting seditious social media articles to promote separating the city from China’s sovereignty and returning to British rule.

District Court Judge Ernest Lin Kam-hung on Tuesday convicted Joseph John, 41, a UK resident of Portuguese nationality, of a count of conspiring with others to do an act or acts with seditious intent over offensive statements and pictures posted on various social media platforms, as well as the party’s website.

The court heard that 42 posts circulated online from September 16, 2019, to November 1, 2022, with content urging the United States and the United Kingdom to place troops in the city and the abolition of the Sino-British Joint Declaration. Thirty-five of those posts were made after the national security law took effect on June 30, 2020.

The agreement, signed by Britain and China in 1984 to settle the future of Hong Kong, paved the way for the city’s return to Chinese rule in 1997.

According to a summary of facts that John admitted to, the party was founded by a European citizen in 2014 and registered as a political party in Britain a year later. It was declared as a “distinct national group” which sought self-determination on Hong Kong’s future.

Over the years, the party had accumulated more than 7,000 followers on its Facebook page and about 2,000 on its Twitter, Instagram and Telegram channels. All platforms between 2019 to 20212 were used to repeatedly disseminate the party’s political agenda and to call for crowdfunding and protests outside the British consulate in Hong Kong.