CNN
 — 

A Hong Kong court docket on Saturday sentenced 5 speech therapists to 19 months in jail over youngsters’s books deemed to be seditious, in a case that rights defenders say marks a serious blow to free speech amid a tightening of civil liberties within the Chinese language territory.

On Wednesday, Lorie Lai, Melody Yeung, Sidney Ng, Samuel Chan and Marco Fong had been discovered responsible of “conspiracy to print, publish, distribute, show and/or reproduce seditious publications.”

Decide W. Okay. Kwok referred to as the defendants’ actions “a brainwashing train with a view to guiding the very younger youngsters to just accept their views and values, i.e. (Beijing) has no sovereignty over (Hong Kong).”

Yeung stated in court docket on Saturday that her “solely remorse was that she had not revealed extra image books earlier than her arrest,” in accordance with court docket paperwork.

The costs focus on a set of books telling the tales of a village of sheep resisting a pack of wolves invading their house – a storyline that the federal government prosecutors alleged was meant to impress contempt of the native authorities and China’s central authorities in Beijing.

In a single e-book, the wolves tried to takeover a village and eat the sheep, in one other, 12 sheep are compelled to go away their village after being focused by the wolves, which the court docket believed alluded to the case the place 12 Hong Kong activists tried to flee the town to Taiwan as fugitives, however had been intercepted by Chinese language legislation enforcement.

In a ruling Wednesday, a Hong Kong District Courtroom choose sided with the prosecution, expressing his view that the pictures had a correlation to occasions in metropolis, and discovering that the authors had the intention to “carry into hatred or contempt or to excite disaffection” towards the native and central authorities, or each.

“By figuring out (the Individuals’s Republic of China) authorities because the wolves … the kids can be led into perception that (the PRC authorities) is coming to Hong Kong with the depraved intention of taking away their house and ruining their completely happy life with no proper to take action in any respect,” the choose Kwok Wai Kin wrote in a 67-page doc outlining his considering on the decision.

“The publishers of the books clearly refuse to acknowledge that (China) has resumed exercising sovereignty over (Hong Kong),” Kwok wrote in his determination, referring to the switch of Hong Kong, a former British colony, to Chinese language rule in 1997.

The case has turn into a proxy for looming questions in regards to the limits of freedom of expression within the metropolis, coming amid a bigger crackdown on civil liberties as a part of Beijing’s response to wide-scale, months-long anti-government protests in 2019.

These protests, which had been sparked in response to a proposed invoice which might ship Hong Kongers to be tried for crimes throughout the border, remodeled in to a bigger pro-democracy motion that was additionally linked to standard concern about Beijing’s rising affect within the semi-autonomous metropolis.

The protection for the accused, who had been all government council members of the now defunct Common Union of the Hong Kong Speech Therapists, had argued that the fees leveled towards them had been unconstitutional, on condition that they had been inconsistent with their freedoms of expression protected below Hong Kong legislation.

However Kwok, who can also be one in every of a small cohort of judges hand-picked by the town’s chief to listen to circumstances associated to nationwide safety, struck down that problem, saying as a substitute that restricted restrictions on freedom of expression had been needed for the safety of nationwide safety and public order.

In a doc outlining causes for the responsible verdict, Kwok disputed that the books had been merely fables selling common values, one other argument raised by the protection, pointing to a foreword in one of many books that references an “anti-legislation motion” in 2019 and the “One Nation, Two Techniques” mechanism governing Hong Kong’s relationship with the mainland.

The case was thrown into the general public eye following their arrest, when police accused the group in a Tweet of “sugarcoating protesters’ illegal acts” and “glorifying fugitives fleeing,” with officers elevating particular considerations on condition that the target market was youngsters. Beijing and native leaders have sought to encourage nationwide satisfaction amongst Hong Kong youth, together with by bolstering nationwide training in native curricula.

The decision has been met with outcry from rights defenders. Human Rights Watch in an announcement accused the Hong Kong authorities of utilizing the “very broad” sedition legislation “to penalize minor speech offenses.”

“Hong Kong individuals used to learn in regards to the absurd prosecution of individuals in mainland China for writing political allegories, however that is now taking place in Hong Kong,” stated Maya Wang, senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch in an announcement. “Hong Kong authorities ought to reverse this dramatic decline in freedoms and quash the convictions of the 5 youngsters’s e-book authors.”

In July, the United Nations’ Human Rights Committee additionally referred to as on Hong Kong to repeal its colonial-era sedition legislation, saying it was involved about its use to restrict residents’ “legit proper to freedom of speech.”

In a reply, the federal government stated use of the legislation was “not meant to silence expression of any opinion that’s solely real criticism towards the federal government primarily based on goal information.”

The legislation, a part of a 1938 Crimes Ordinance unused for many years, has been revived alongside Beijing’s introduction of a Nationwide Safety Legislation to Hong Kong in 2020, which targets secession, subversion, collusion with international forces and terrorist actions – with a most sentence of life in jail.

Final yr a court docket dominated that elements of the unique sedition legislation which referenced the monarch may very well be transformed to imply references to the central authorities or the Hong Kong authorities. A conviction carries a most two-year sentence.

Different current circumstances have included the sentencing of a 75-year-old activist to 9 months in jail for planning to protest towards the Beijing Winter Olympics earlier this yr. Final month, two males had been arrested below suspicion of violating the legislation in reference to a Fb group they’re stated to have managed.