University graduate gets 5 months’ jail in Hong Kong for seditious online comments magistrate likens to ‘setting a time bomb’

Wong Ho-cheong, 24, had ‘incited hatred or contempt’ of Beijing and local authorities and encouraged others to break the law, court told

On one occasion he urged Hongkongers to take advantage of protests against the mainland’s strict Covid curbs to revive the 2019 anti-government unrest in the city

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Defendent Wong Ho-cheong appeared in court on Monday. Photo: Dickson Lee

Published: 9:12pm, 27 Mar 2023Updated: 9:16am, 28 Mar 2023

A university graduate has been jailed for five months in Hong Kong for writing 196 social media comments with seditious intent, including promoting a series of children’s books deemed offensive and slamming “authoritarian” pandemic measures.

Wong Ho-cheong, a former council member of the now-dissolved student union at Chinese University, is the latest Hongkonger to plead guilty to a charge under a 1938 sedition law that authorities began using in the wake of national security legislation imposed by Beijing.

Prosecutors on Monday told West Kowloon Court that Wong, 24, had “incited hatred or contempt” of Beijing and local authorities and encouraged others to break the law through offensive statements he made on the popular LIHKG forum and Facebook from last August to January this year.

Wong, who is jobless and holds a bachelor’s degree in political science, caught the attention of law enforcement after sharing on Facebook a link to a book series which portrayed mainland China as a group of wolves invading a village of sheep that was Hong Kong.

The post on September 29 last year also contained a provocative statement: “Cat[c]h me if you can, motherf****r.”

The message was capable of instigating readers to flout the national security law as it was deliberately published despite a court previously finding the articles to be seditious, Senior Inspector Chen Wenjing of the police’s national security unit said.

Further investigations found Wong had repeatedly advocated Hong Kong’s independence and insulted the central and local administrations, the court heard.

Authorities have deemed a series of children’s books as offensive. Photo: Edmond So