Chow Man-wai pleaded guilty and expressed remorse for making “seditious comments” online. According to Hong Kong Free Press (“Hong Kong clerk jailed for 4 months after calling for downfall of China’s Communist Party on online forum,” November 24, 2023):
He was arrested in September and was accused of posting 49 “seditious comments” on online discussion forum LIHKG between March and September.
Those comments included calling for the overthrow of the Chinese Communist Party and Xi, as well as discussing killing top Chinese officials and bombing Zhongnanhai, the Chinese leadership compound in Beijing, local media reported.
Chow was also said to have called for international sanctions to be imposed on Hong Kong officials over alleged human rights violations. “[Those working for the] Department of Justice must be sanctioned, including their family members,” reads one of his posts written in Chinese, according to The Witness….
Chief magistrate Victor So said Chow’s online comments had incited violence and sanctions against government officials and had challenged the authority of the central government. So said there was a risk that the comments could have incited some “ignorant” people to take action.
Because he pleaded guilty, Chow’s sentence was reduced by two months. The modified sentence is four months. If the four months in jail will really be the total of his punishment—which cannot be taken for granted given the ongoing collapse of Hong Kong’s governmental institutions into mainland-style arbitrariness—the Hong Konger is getting off easy. The Chinese Communist Party has incarcerated many people for much longer for saying much less.
Of course, anybody who advocates sanctions against rights-violating Hong Kong officials and overthrow of the Chinese Communist Party and Dictator Xi Jinping should be applauded, not reprimanded or jailed.
Also see:
Council on Foreign Relations: “Hong Kong’s Freedoms: What China Promised and How It’s Cracking Down”
“In recent years, Beijing has taken increasingly brazen steps to encroach on Hong Kong’s political system and crack down on dissent.”
Freedom House: “Freedom in the World 2023: Hong Kong”
“The implementation of the National Security Law (NSL) in 2020 has amounted to a multifront attack on the ‘one country, two systems’ framework.”
StopTheChinazis.org: “Pro-democracy Parties ‘Failed to Field’ Candidates in Rubble of Hong Kong’s Democracy”
“Candidates for Hong Kong’s district councils must secure nominations from members of government-appointed committees. The people that the government appoints to these meaningless committees know that democracy is no longer a thing in the new Hong Kong and that a good way to get in trouble with the Chinese state is to do any kind of democracy-enabling.”
