Five members of the General Union of Hong Kong Speech Therapists (GUHKST) were arrested on 22 July. Their phones, computers and trade union leaflets were taken away by the police. The two men and three women included the union chair and vice chair, Li Wenling and Yang Yiyi. According to the police, they had “conspired to publish, distribute, exhibit or copy seditious publications”. Both were prosecuted, remanded and denied bail on the next day with charges of conspiracy to print, publish, distribute, display and/or copy seditious publications. The other three leaders were granted bail.
The “seditious” publications were three illustrated e-books for children with speech problems published by the union in 2020. They explain Hong Kong’s democracy movement. Democracy supporters are portrayed as sheep living in a village surrounded by wolves. The first book explains the 2019 pro-democracy protests, the second is a story of cleaners in the village who go on strike (but the introduction explains it is about the strike by Hong Kong medical workers), and the third tells the tale of a group of sheep who flee their village, in a reference to the Hongkongers who tried to escape to Taiwan.
The police claimed the picture books incited hatred against the government and the judiciary, promoting violence and non-compliance with the law. The bank account and assets of the union were frozen under the National Security Law. In the hearing on 30 August, the judge remanded all five union officers in custody pending their next hearing on 24 October 2021.
The sedition law is a colonial-era law that until 2020 had not been used since Hong Kong’s 1997 handover to China. It carries up to two years in jail for a first offence. Since the democracy protests, police and prosecutors began regularly using it alongside the National Security Law to clamp down on political speech and views.
Due to the constant pressure, the GUHKST announced in August 2021 it was to disband. It was already under threat of deregistration.
