Five speech therapists in Hong Kong have been convicted of sedition for publishing illustrated children's books related to the 2019 pro-democracy protests and other local issues. Amnesty International's China campaigner, Gwen Lee, condemned the verdicts, stating that the charges reflect a serious erosion of human rights in the city.
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Lee emphasized, "Writing books for children is not a crime, and attempting to educate children about recent events in Hong Kong’s history does not constitute an attempt to incite rebellion." She criticized the revival of colonial-era sedition laws by the Hong Kong authorities as a blatant suppression of free speech.
The convicted therapists, two men and three women, were members of the General Union of Hong Kong Speech Therapists before the union's registration was revoked in October 2021 on allegations of serving "unlawful purposes." They face a maximum sentence of two years in jail, with sentencing scheduled for Saturday.
The therapists were arrested in July 2021 after publishing a series of books, including titles like *The Guardians of Sheep Village* and *The 12 Heroes of Sheep Village*, which portray local residents as sheep and mainland Chinese authorities as wolves. Hong Kong’s national security police claimed these stories demonstrated "seditious intent" and could incite violence.
Since the implementation of the National Security Law in June 2020, the government has increasingly used sedition charges to curb dissent. Legal precedents set in cases involving national security have also impacted sedition charges, evidenced when the Court of Final Appeal applied stricter bail conditions to one of the therapists, Sidney Ng, who sought bail in 2021.
In July, the United Nations Human Rights Committee expressed alarm over the use of colonial-era sedition laws to silence critics and called for their repeal to protect freedom of expression. International law maintains that this freedom encompasses all forms of expression, even those that may be deemed offensive.