HONG KONG:  , A 27-year-old man faces up to several years in jail for sedition, after pleading guilty on Monday ( Sep 16 ) to wearing a protest T-shirt that prosecutors say flouts Hong Kong’s new national security law.
In January, Chu Kai-pong had previously served a three-month prison sentence for sedition for bringing in and carrying flags with opposition slogans in his luggage.
He entered a guilty plea on Monday, which resulted in the state’s first judgment under the new tougher rules.
One of the phrases on the clothes,” Liberate Hong Kong, trend of our days”, had been found to be” worthy of inciting independence” in a separate court case.
On June 12, a meeting associated with the massive and occasionally violent protests in 2019, Chu was detained for wearing a T-shirt with the offending tagline and a helmet with protest slogans.
Chu told the judge that he believed the phrase called for the transfer of Hong Kong to British law and that he had chosen the outfit to elicit the public’s attention during the protests of 2019 when the phrase was frequently used by protesters.
Following Chu’s guilty plea, Chief Magistrate Victor Thus added that two different crimes involving leaving the house and breaking the ID cards were dropped.
Chu, who has been in prison for three decades, may be sentenced on Thursday.