Kong

July 16 (UPI) — Police in Hong Kong detained five bookstore workers on suspicion of breaches of the territory’s national security law during raids on two independent shops.

The two men, aged 37 and 57, and three women, aged between 30 and 59, were arrested in the Mong Kok district of the city on Wednesday on suspicion of “intention to commit sedition” under the 2024 Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, Hong Kong Police Force said in a news release.

They said the five were being detained under investigation. If convicted, they face a maximum prison sentence of seven years.

Police accuse the suspects of displaying items with seditious intent and selling publications with seditious content, specifically inciting hatred against the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government, the judiciary, and law enforcement agencies.

They said they seized books which they allege had “seditious intent” from the shops during the raid, which was mounted on a tip-off after customs officers intercepted a shipment of books allegedly containing seditious material. Police did not say which country the books were being shipped from.

Local media identified the stores as Greenfield Book Store and Have A Nice Stay, which is run by former journalists and specializes in books on democracy, authoritarianism and media literacy.

Photos circulating online show one young woman being led away from the Have A Nice Stay store in handcuffs and police loading plastic storage containers of evidence onto a truck.

The raid came a day after Have A Nice Stay announced on Instagram that it would be shutting its doors for good on Aug. 30. Apologizing, it said because it was losing money and was fearful of running foul of the law.

“The elusive red line is certainly a reason. The director has made it clear before that he will not explain what books cannot be sold. We are really limited in our ability to read every book or decide which are a ‘problem.’ For us, books are the space of knowledge and thought, and this space is supposed to be flawless… We lack the ability and courage to carry out our mission of disseminating knowledge through books,” the store wrote.

According to its Facebook bio, Greenfield Book Store specializes in literature, history, philosophy, art, society, and self-help books from Hong Kong and Taiwan with discounts offered year-round.

Human rights groups condemned the arrests.

“The use of ‘sedition’ offenses to target bookstores once again demonstrates how Hong Kong’s national security framework is being weaponized to silence dissenting voices and eradicate spaces for free thought and debate,” Amnesty International said in a news release.

It said increasingly ambiguous “red lines” for booksellers intentionally left publishers and authors guessing what material could render them liable to criminal investigation, arrest or closure, stoking fear and self-censorship with “devastating consequences for freedom of expression.”

Human Rights Watch said in a post on X that the targeting of and arrests of booksellers “exposed what the Chinese government fears most: free thinking.”

“Beijing is trying to impose a world where people think only what the authorities permit,” it wrote.

The arrests bring to 11 the number of bookstore workers arrested following raids on two other stores in March and June.

The latest crackdown came two weeks after bookseller Lam Wing-Kee passed away in exile in Taiwan. He ran Causeway Bay Books on Hong Kong island for two decades until he, Gui Minhai and four others associated with the business went missing in 2015.

Lam returned to Hong Kong eight months later, saying he had been abducted by Chinese security officials as he was returning from a trip to the mainland. He gave a press conference claiming he had been sent back to Hong Kong to retrieve a hard drive containing names of writers and customers. He then fled to Taiwan.

A Chinese court in Ningbo sentenced Swedish citizen Gui to 10 years in prison in 2020 for “illegally providing intelligence” to foreign governments after Swedish authorities concluded he was likely kidnapped while on vacation in Thailand in 2015 and may have been tortured while in custody.

Thai authorities had no record of Gui exiting the country.

A fine place to stop for a milk tea-centered breakfast or lunch after exploring the labyrinth of African, Indian and other international shops and food stalls inside Chungking Mansions — one of the last remaining film locations in Wong Kar-wai’s iconic “Chungking Express,” where Brigitte Lin’s drug-dealing retired actor is seen conducting her business in a blond wig, trenchcoat and sunglasses. Lan Fong Yuen, in the basement of Heath Mall (which is technically part of Chungking Mansions but has a separate street entrance), has its own historic pedigree. Late founder Lam Muk-ho is credited with originating silk-stocking milk tea (it’s strained through a long cloth filter), and possibly yuenyeung (milk tea mixed with coffee), at the still-operating Gage Street stall he opened in Central in 1952. He’s also said to have popularized the thick-cut Hong Kong-style French toast and pork-chop buns so familiar in our own San Gabriel Valley cafes, as well as “lo-ding” instant noodle dishes, especially the chicken-chop version. The Tsim Sha Tsui location opened in 2009 but has an older diner aesthetic that attracts tourists and locals who line up for the scene and affordable Hong Kong comfort food.

Heath Mall basement, Shop No. S09, Chungking Mansions, 44 Nathan Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, Hong Kong

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