A Hong Kong man has been jailed for four months for sedition over online posts calling for the downfall of the Chinese Communist Party and insulting China’s leader Xi Jinping.
Chow Man-wai, a 46-year-old clerk, pleaded guilty to “doing an act or acts with seditious intent” under the colonial-era sedition law at West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts on Thursday. He was arrested in September and was accused of posting 49 “seditious comments” on online discussion forum LIHKG between March and September.
Those comments included calling for the overthrow of the Chinese Communist Party and Xi, as well as discussing killing top Chinese officials and bombing Zhongnanhai, the Chinese leadership compound in Beijing, local media reported.
Chow was also said to have called for international sanctions to be imposed on Hong Kong officials over alleged human rights violations. “[Those working for the] Department of Justice must be sanctioned, including their family members,” reads one of his posts written in Chinese, according to the Witness.
The prosecution on Thursday argued that Chow’s comments had brought hatred or contempt or had elicited disaffection against the central government. His comments also incited others to violence, the prosecution said.
In a mitigation letter submitted to the court, the defence lawyer said Chow cared for his mother, who suffered from depression. Chow committed the offence after being influenced by radical ideologies online and was remorseful, the lawyer said.
Chief magistrate Victor So said Chow’s online comments had incited violence and sanctions against government officials and had challenged the authority of the central government. So said there was a risk that the comments could have incited some “ignorant” people to take action.
The judge sentenced Chow to four months in jail after reducing the starting sentence by two months because of his guilty plea.
Sedition is not covered by the Beijing-imposed national security law, which targets secession, subversion, collusion with foreign forces and terrorist acts and mandates up to life imprisonment. Those convicted under the sedition law – last amended in the 1970s when Hong Kong was still a British colony – face a maximum penalty of two years in prison.
Both sedition and national security law trials are handled by judges who have been handpicked to hear such cases, and are subject to equally stringent bail restrictions.
At least 20 of the more than 30 people charged with sedition have not been activists nor politicians, but ordinary people, from service industry workers to delivery staff, AFP reported in July.
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