Hong Kong police arrested six people on Tuesday under the city’s new security law for “posting messages with seditious intention” online.
Five women and one man aged between 37 and 65 were arrested Tuesday, said the National Security Department of the Hong Kong Police Force in a statement.
One of the women arrested was already on remand at the Tai Lam Centre, a maximum-security women’s prison, the police said.
Police investigations revealed that the woman on remand, through the five others, “had been posting messages with seditious intention on an anonymous social media page since April 2024, taking advantage of an upcoming sensitive day,” the statement said.
This was done “with the aim to incite hatred towards the Central Government (Beijing), the HKSAR Government and the Judiciary, as well as inciting netizens to organise or take part in unlawful activities at a later stage.”
The six people were “suspected of violating section 24 of the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, which reads ‘Offences in connection with seditious intent’,” the statement said, referring to Hong Kong’s newly enacted law.
It would be the first such arrests under the law, commonly referred to as Article 23.
Enacted in March, Article 23 includes penalties of up to life imprisonment for five categories of crime including treason, insurrection, espionage, sabotage and external interference.
It also expanded the British colonial-era offence of “sedition” to include inciting hatred against China’s Communist Party leadership.
The legislation is the city’s second national security law — the first was imposed by Beijing in 2020 after huge, sometimes violent democracy protests were dispelled.
Tuesday’s arrests come a week before June 4, the 35th anniversary of when Beijing sent troops into Tiananmen Square to quash appeals for democracy.
