Hong Kong police have taken two bookshop owners into custody on suspicion of displaying and selling publications considered to have “seditious” content, according to an official government statement issued Thursday.
Neither the two individuals nor the bookshop were named in the statement. Both were taken into custody on Wednesday.
The arrests were carried out by the National Security Department of the Hong Kong Police Force during an enforcement operation in the Sham Shui Po district. The two detainees — a 33-year-old woman and a 32-year-old man — are the bookshop’s owners.
According to police investigators, the pair is suspected of selling materials that incite hatred toward the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government, its courts, and law enforcement agencies.
Authorities also allege that the two individuals received multiple money transfers funded by foreign political organizations.
During the operation, officers confiscated a collection of items labeled “seditious,” along with books and documents connected to the case, from both the shop and the suspects’ residence.
The timing of the arrests is notable — they occurred just one week before July 1, the anniversary marking Hong Kong’s 1997 handover to Chinese rule. Under Hong Kong’s Basic Law, the city was promised a high degree of autonomy for 50 years, which includes freedom of the press.
In 2020, Beijing enacted a national security law in Hong Kong following a year of often violent anti-government demonstrations. The move drew widespread international condemnation, with critics arguing that the freedoms guaranteed to Hong Kong at the time of the handover are steadily eroding.
