Why Hongkongers must judge for themselves whether their speech, publication may be considered seditious under new domestic security law
- Legal scholar Albert Chen says residents who engage in speech or publication have to judge for themselves whether it is considered seditious under ordinance
- Ex-director of public prosecutions Grenville Cross says threshold for police to make arrest is lower than that for prosecutors to press charges
Hong Kong’s new domestic national security law will “inevitably” produce some degree of chilling effect but prosecuting suspects will require a higher threshold than that of an arrest, legal experts have said, after an activist on remand and six others were arrested for sedition over content on the Tiananmen Square crackdown.
Chow Hang-tung was among the seven arrested on Tuesday and Wednesday. She is a former chairwoman for the now-defunct Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, which previously organised June 4 vigils at Victoria Park to mark the crackdown.
Chow is currently remanded at Tai Lam Centre for Women for a separate offence.
The arrests are the first under the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, with security chief Chris Tang Ping-keung saying the case focused on allegedly seditious content posted on a Facebook group called “ChowHangTungClub” since April.
University of Hong Kong legal scholar and former Basic Law Committee member Albert Chen Hung-yee said that while sedition was an offence carried over from colonial-era criminal law that referred to the British monarch, the new legislation introduced new elements to the crime.
“Even with the post-1997 substitution of the British crown by the central government for the purpose of interpretation, before the new ordinance was enacted, there was no legal provision on inciting hatred, contempt or disaffection against the ‘fundamental system of the state’,” he said.