Hong Kong's police raided two bookstores and arrested five people on suspicion of selling what they claimed to be “seditious” books in the latest sign of the city's widening crackdown on the publishing industry under its sweeping national security law.
Police said they searched two shops in Mong Kok, located in the city's bustling Kowloon district, and arrested five people for “displaying items with seditious intent” and “selling publications with seditious content”.
Those arrested included two men, aged 37 and 57, and three women, aged 30 to 59, the statement said.
Police said they received a referral from Hong Kong's customs department stating that a "batch of books with seditious intention was intercepted inside a consignment shipped to Hong Kong from overseas".
The Committee to Protect Journalists said booksellers Sum Wan-wah and Mandy Lau were among those who were arrested. The two co-founded the Have a Nice Stay bookstore with three other journalists in 2022.
It marks the latest incident of a crackdown on the former British colony’s once-flourishing independent bookstore industry. The arrests and raids have seen bookstores shutting down and books critical of Hong Kong and the mainland Chinese government vanishing from shelves since Beijing imposed sweeping national security legislation on the city in 2020.
Many of these stores, which offered a broader range of political and social titles than those found in mainstream shops, had become vital outlets for Hong Kong's civil society by hosting book talks and workshops.
Police also raided the Greenfield Book Store in Mong Kok on Wednesday, according to local media reports.
Videos run by local televisions showed dozens of officers outside Have a Nice Stay, the 4th floor bookstore in Prince Edward, and seizing materials from the store into the truck. Men wearing vests marked with “Police” were seen escorting a woman out of the building in handcuffs at around 5pm.
Similar scenes were seen a few streets away, with boxes of material being seized from a building that houses Greenfield Book Store.
The Have A Nice Stay bookstore had already announced it would be shutting down on 30 August due to financial difficulties and "uncertainties regarding the social environment".
“The unclear red lines are certainly part of the reason,” the bookshop said in its Tuesday statement, as authorities have never specified which books can and cannot be legally sold in the city.
CJP Asia-Pacific director Beh Lih Yi said: “Using national security legislation to go after another bookstore run by journalists is an attack on press freedom and independent publishing in the city”.
“Hong Kong authorities must release journalists Sum Wan-wah and Mandy Lau and stop persecuting independent publishers.”
Amnesty International said the use of the word "sedition" offences to crack down on bookstores is again a demonstration of how Hong Kong's national security is "being weaponised to silence dissenting voices and eradicate spaces for free thought and debate".
"This year's escalating attacks on Hong Kong's independent bookstores hammer home the chilling reality of what the city has become: a place where you can be criminalised simply for what's on your bookshelf," Amnesty International's deputy regional director Sarah Brooks said.
Police said “investigations revealed that the five arrestees are suspected of displaying items with seditious intent and selling publications with seditious content inside the shops”.
It added that the publications involved incited hatred against Hong Kong's government, the judiciary, and law enforcement agencies. "A batch of books with seditious intention was seized from the shops."
It marks the third round of arrests linked to independent bookstores in Hong Kong with similar raids and arrests conducted by national security police in March and June.
The incidents are widely seen as stifling of dissent in the Asian financial hubs where a number of newspapers have been forced to shut down and journalists, including high-profile media moguls such as Jimmy Lai, have been incarcerated.
In March, police arrested the owner and staff of Book Punch bookstore for allegedly selling seditious publications. The books included The Troublemaker, a biography of the incarcerated media tycoon, Lai, who was sentenced to 20 years in jail in a trial condemned as a sham.
In June, they arrested two people on suspicion of selling alleged seditious publications and receiving funds from foreign political organisations. All were later released on bail.
Hong Kong’s Secretary for Security Chris Tang Ping-keung warned that booksellers are responsible for ensuring their titles do not violate national security legislation. He also said the government would not compile a list of “banned books”, arguing that doing so would create loopholes where offenders could evade the law by simply changing a title.
“If you are a bookseller, you have a responsibility to ensure that the books you sell do not endanger national security,” Mr Tang said.
“This is similar to a food seller, who must ensure that the food they sell will not make people sick or contain poison.
“We target the content, not the book title itself. If [we only rely on a list] of book titles, many people would simply change the titles of books that are illegal or endanger national security, and claim they are not on the ‘black list’; therefore, you cannot arrest me.”
The Independent has reached out to Greenfield Book Store and Have a Nice Stay for comment.
