Hong Kong police have arrested four people aged 16-21 for suspected offences under the city’s new national security law, the first such detentions outside of street protests since the legislation took effect a month ago
HONG KONG - .
“We arrested for ... subversions and for the organising and also the inciting secession,” said Li Kwai-wah, police superintendent at the national security department. Activists in Hong Kong scrambled to shut or rebrand social media accounts that could fall foul of the new security law before it was imposed. Police said the four were suspected of posting content that violated the legislation in July.
The law has been condemned by some Western governments, business leaders and human rights groups who say it represents the latest move by Beijing to tighten its grip over the former British colony. In a Facebook post, Initiative Independence Party said four former members of Studentlocalism, a pro-independence group that was disbanded before the new law took effect, had been arrested on suspicion of violating Articles 20 and 21 of the legislation that include inciting secession. They were denied bail.
Critics of the security legislation fear it will crush wide-ranging freedoms not seen on the mainland, including freedom of speech, that were guaranteed to Hong Kong for 50 years when it returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
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