Arrests at Hong Kong Indie Bookshop Deepen Concerns Over Publishing Freedom
Hong Kong’s national security police have arrested the owner of an independent bookstore and another person on suspicion of selling seditious publications and receiving funds from foreign political organisations, in a case that underscores mounting pressure on the city’s publishing sector.
Officers from the National Security Department detained a 33-year-old woman and a 32-year-old man during an operation in the working-class district of Sham Shui Po on Wednesday, according to a government statement. Multiple news reports identified the shop as Hunter Bookstore and the owner as Leticia Wong Man-huen, a former district councillor and one-time political reporter for local newspaper Sing Tao Daily. Police did not name the suspects in their official statement.
Authorities alleged the pair displayed items with seditious intent and sold publications that incited hatred against the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government, the judiciary, and law enforcement agencies. Police said they seized a batch of books, documents and other materials deemed “seditious” from the shop and related premises. Wong is also suspected of breaching Hong Kong’s Organised and Serious Crimes Ordinance, with police accusing her of receiving multiple remittances funded by foreign political organisations. Among the publications reportedly taken by officers was a copy of “The Troublemaker,” a biography of jailed media figure Jimmy Lai.
The arrests come ahead of politically sensitive dates: the July 1 anniversary of Hong Kong’s 1997 handover to Chinese rule, and days before the sixth anniversary of the Beijing-imposed national security law, enacted in 2020 following large-scale anti-government protests. That law, together with colonial-era sedition provisions, has increasingly been used in cases involving media, civil society and publishing. Press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists urged authorities to release Wong and criticised what it described as an expanding application of national security legislation to the city’s book and magazine trade.
