Hong Kong sedition trial focuses on children’s books about sheep and wolves
The trial of five Hong Kong speech therapists who were arrested last year for bringing out children's books involving sheep and wolves has begun, with the unionists pleading not guilty to publishing seditious material.
The trial began in the city's district court on Tuesday before a judge picked by pro-Beijing city leader John Lee to reportedly oversee cases pertaining to national security.
The group of two men and three women, who were members of the now-defunct General Union of Hong Kong Speech Therapists, were arrested in July 2021 under a colonial-era law for publishing children's books aimed at “inciting hatred” towards the city's government.
The unionists have been charged for publishing and distributing three picture books where Beijing has been allegedly portrayed as a “cold-blooded, totalitarian and brutal” regime.
On the first day of the trial, prosecutor Laura Ng said the books painted the two groups as hostile towards each other.
“Hong Kong residents are [shown as] vulnerable minorities, Chinese rulers are cold-blooded, totalitarian and brutal, and mainland Chinese are thugs,” Ms Ng said, describing the books.
At the time of the arrests, police said one book, Defenders of the Sheep Village, was connected to the 2019 pro-democracy protests. In the story, wolves want to occupy the village and eat the sheep, who in turn use their horns to fight back.
The second book, titled The 12 Warriors of Sheep Village, narrates the story of 12 sheep taken by wolves to the beasts’ village, where they would be cooked. This was linked to 12 Hong Kongers captured by China in August 2020 as they were trying to flee the city by boat.
The third book tells the story of “dirty wolves” sneaking through a hole into the sheep village, allegedly blaming mainland China for the Covid-19 pandemic by portraying them as “selfish, uncivilised and unhygienic”.
The prosecutor argued in court that the defendants, all in their 20s, had openly admitted to basing the picture books on the pro-democracy protests.
“Had [they] not been arrested on 22 July 2021, they would have continued to put the conspiracy into action, corrupt the minds of children and adults by producing and distributing other seditious publications, and build up anti-China and anti-Hong Kong forces in the city,” Ms Ng said, according to the South China Morning Post.
If convicted, the five unionists will be sentenced to a maximum penalty of two years in prison under the sedition law.
The arrests were made following the imposition of the draconian national security law in June 2020, which critics fear the government has been weaponising to throttle dissent in the wake of the protests in the semi-autonomous city.
Under the law, crimes of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces are punishable by a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
However, city authorities have denied any erosion of rights and freedoms in Hong Kong, despite arbitrary arrests of activists and a crackdown on journalists.
