A former bus technician has been jailed for a year under Hong Kong’s domestic national security law for publishing derogatory comments on social media, including depicting police officers as “rogue cops” and the city as an “international hub of false imprisonment”.
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Li Chun-kit, 36, on Thursday pleaded guilty at West Kowloon Court to one count of knowingly publishing publications with a seditious intention, the sixth conviction under the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance.
The court heard Li published 117 offensive posts on his Facebook page between March 2024 and January this year, inciting violence while taking aim at police, the judiciary and the Beijing-imposed national security law.
The defendant targeted police in 66 comments, accusing “rogue cops” of wantonly beating people and making arbitrary arrests during the 2019 anti-government protests.
He also said police officers were the true “rioters”, a term which the authorities have repeatedly used to describe protesters.
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Li regularly shared news clippings of court rulings in protest-related cases, insisting that prosecutors had trumped up rioting charges against demonstrators while saying their frequent appeals against acquittals had reduced the city’s rule of law to the rule of man.
“Hong Kong is an international hub of false imprisonment,” Li claimed in a post. “Even if the judge acquits you, the Department of Justice can … mess with you by lodging an appeal, making you the subject of false imprisonment.”