The Next Chapter for Hong Kong’s digital repression: Total judicial cooperation
Charles Mok is an internet entrepreneur and IT advocate. He was formerly a member of the Hong Kong Legislative Council and founded the Hong Kong chapter of the Internet Society. He is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Global Digital Policy Incubator at Stanford University. This article appeared in OPTF.
In a bizarre case of government censorship aided by the court in Hong Kong, five speech therapists were sentenced to 19 months in jail for “conspiracy to print, publish, distribute, display and/or reproduce seditious publications.” The evidence? A set of illustrated print children’s storybooks depicting a village of sheep resisting wolves invading their village. The judge found that the books were part of “a brainwashing exercise with a view to guiding the very young children to accept their views and values,” and the authors intended to “bring into hatred or contempt or to excite disaffection” against the local and central government.