Man jailed for three months over ‘seditious’ T-shirt with a protest slogan

A 26-year-old man was sentenced to three months in jail on Wednesday for wearing a T-shirt with “seditious” slogans from the protests in 2019. 

Chu Kai-pong was arrested and charged in November before boarding a flight to Taiwan at the Hong Kong International Airport and has since been remanded. 

The court was told that the airport’s security guards had spotted Chu wearing a T-shirt with the words “Free Hong Kong” in English and “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times” in Chinese, and reported him to the police. 

The latter phrase was found to be “able to incite secession” in the first trial under a sweeping national security law imposed in 2020. 

In that earlier trial, Leon Tong Ying-kit – a motorcyclist carrying a flag bearing those words – was sentenced to nine years in jail. 

Chu had pleaded guilty to one count of “doing acts with seditious intent” and one count of “possession of seditious publications” earlier this month. He had also been in possession of another T-shirt with the English slogan “Hong Kong Independence”, according to the court, while his luggage contained another T-shirt and three black flags. 

Chu’s lawyer had argued that freedom of thought was not restricted by law and the seditious intention found in the words might not be the defendant’s intent. The prosecution said that by displaying the slogan in public, Chu could incite others to try to separate Hong Kong from China. 

Judge Victor So Wai-tak said Chu had “knowingly broken the law” despite previous court verdicts over the slogans. 

(Staff reporter and AFP)