Hong Kong arrests booksellers suspected of selling 'seditious' publications

BEIJING, June 25 - Hong Kong police have arrested two owners of a bookshop suspected of displaying and selling publications with "seditious" content, according to a Hong Kong government statement released on Thursday.

The two individuals and the bookshop were not identified in the statement. They were arrested on Wednesday.

Here are more details:

• During an enforcement operation in the Sham Shui Po district on Wednesday, the National Security Department of the Hong Kong Police Force detained the bookshop owners, a 33-year-old woman and a 32-year-old man, the government statement said.

• Police investigations showed that the two people were suspected to be selling publications including materials inciting hatred against the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government, the judiciary and law enforcement agencies, the statement said.

• The two arrested people are suspected of having received multiple remittances funded by foreign political organisations, it said.

• Police officers seized a batch of "seditious" items, books and case-related documents from their shop and residence, the statement said.

• The arrests took place one week before the July 1 anniversary of Hong Kong's handover to Chinese rule in 1997. Under Hong Kong's Basic Law, the city is guaranteed a high degree of freedom for 50 years, including freedom of the press.

• In 2020, Beijing imposed a national security law on the city after often violent anti-government protests a year earlier, sparking international criticism that the freedoms promised to the city at the handover are disappearing. REUTERS