Two people arrested for sedition in Hong Kong

Two Hong Kong residents were arrested Friday on sedition charges under a new national security law, the territory’s police said Saturday. They are accused of spreading hatred against Chinese and local authorities.

The arrests came a day after two former editors of the pro-democracy media outlet were convicted. Stand Newsconvicted of sedition, the first such conviction since the city came under Chinese control in 1997.

A 41-year-old man and a 28-year-old woman were arrested on Friday for committing “an act or acts having seditious intent”police said in a statement.

Hong Kong’s second national security law

The man is accused of having placed in various places “commemorative light boxes” whose content “provokes hatred” towards the authorities in Beijing and Hong Kong, according to the police.

The new national security law, passed in March and known as Article 23, increased the maximum prison sentence for sedition from two to seven years.

It is the second national security law in Hong Kong, following one imposed by Beijing in 2020 after large, sometimes violent, pro-democracy protests a year earlier.