Hong Kong court orders teenager charged with sedition to resign from school’s student union, stop using social media as part of bail terms

A court has ordered a Hong Kong teenager to resign from his school’s student union and stop using social media as conditions of his bail after being charged with sedition for taking part in a protest at a university.

Shum Ka-hon, 17, a sports science student at VTC Youth College and a standing committee member of its student body, was also told on Thursday to obey a 7½-hour curfew daily and surrender his travel documents in exchange for his personal freedom after he became one of two defendants charged over their roles in the march at Chinese University on November 19, 2020.

The other accused, 19-year-old jobless Tong Cheuk-him, did not apply for temporary release when the case was first heard at West Kowloon Court, as he had been remanded in custody in other criminal proceedings.

National security police were alerted after more than 100 people heeded online calls to protest at the university’s Sha Tin campus against its management’s decision to move graduation ceremonies online at the expense of students’ opportunities to express their views on current affairs.

Participants had called for Hong Kong independence and liberation using phrases such as “Liberate Hong Kong; revolution of our times”, a slogan of the 2019 protests now considered a violation of the national security law imposed by Beijing on the city in June 2020.

Prosecutors slapped Shum and Tong with a joint count of conspiracy to utter seditious words, after the pair were spotted among the protesters.

A charge sheet available for press inspection did not provide any specifics of the pair’s actions that day apart from a general description of the nature of the purported crime.