Hong Kong’s national security police on Wednesday raided two bookstores, seized boxes of books and arrested five people on suspicion of sedition.
The police accused two men and three women of displaying items “with seditious intention” and selling publications with “seditious content” that included “inciting hatred” against the Hong Kong government, its judiciary and the police, according to a government statement.
It was the third time in recent months that the police have arrested proprietors of independent bookstores, as part of a broader crackdown in the city that has increasingly focused on literature. The authorities are using a 2024 national security law to squash any dissent. The offense of “seditious intention” is punishable by up to seven years in prison.
The police did not name the bookstores and declined to provide more information when contacted on Thursday. But local media reported the two bookstores as Have a Nice Stay and Greenfield Bookstore, two small independent shops in Kowloon.
Have A Nice Stay was founded and run by local journalists, some of whom previously worked for Stand News, an independent online publication that was shut down in 2021 after the police raided it. Earlier this week, Have a Nice Stay announced it would cease operations on Aug. 30, citing a number of factors including financial issues and “social climate.”
“Looking at the overall economic situation in Hong Kong, we can only take a pessimistic view: it is becoming increasingly difficult to carry on,” read a notice posted on Instagram.
“Our capacity is limited,” the note said, adding that employees could not possibly read and review every book, “let alone determine which ones might be deemed ‘problematic’.”
Local Beijing-backed media in Hong Kong, like Wen Wei Po, have sharpened their focus on independent bookstores in recent months, accusing them of selling books that “blatantly smear” the Chinese and Hong Kong governments and encourage resistance.
The focus has coincided with broader government scrutiny of local media and bookstores.
Earlier this month, the Hong Kong government barred the Elmbook and Luckwin bookstores from exhibiting at the Hong Kong Book Fair, Yalkun Uluyol, a China researcher for Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.
Last month, the authorities arrested two employees at Hunter Bookstore on suspicion of “sedition.” In March, the police arrested four employees at Book Punch under the same allegations. Mr. Uluyol said that both bookstores were said to have carried a biography of Jimmy Lai, a jailed pro-democracy media tycoon. A Hong Kong court handed down its most severe penalty for a national security offense to Mr. Lai this year.
Hong Kong authorities have also launched tax audits on at least six independent bookstores since late 2023, according to Human Rights Watch. The scrutiny is part of what experts said is an attempt to silence dissent since antigovernment protests engulfed Hong Kong in 2019.
“Independent bookstores are among the few remaining spaces where people can encounter ideas, build social ties and sustain an intellectual public,” said Victoria Hui, an associate professor specializing in Chinese politics at the University of Notre Dame. “So targeting both an established bookseller and one founded by journalists displaced by the media crackdown fits a broader pattern of dismantling Hong Kong’s civil society.”
In its post to customers this week, employees at Have a Nice Stay said they felt they no longer had the ability to “fulfill our mission.”
“Even if a book contains views one finds objectionable,” the notice said, “it is still worth reading.”
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