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46歲男認「連登」發布煽動訊息囚4月 案情：留言「習近平仆街冚家剷」等
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Hong Kong clerk jailed for 4 months after calling for downfall of China’s Communist Party on online forum

https://hongkongfp.com/2023/11/24/hong- ... ine-forum/

A Hong Kong man has been jailed for four months for sedition over online posts calling for
the downfall of the Chinese Communist Party and insulting China’s leader Xi Jinping.

Chow Man-wai, a 46-year-old clerk, pleaded guilty to “doing an act or acts with seditious
intent” under the colonial-era sedition law at West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts on
Thursday. He arrested in September and accused of posting 49 “seditious comments” on
online discussion forum LIHKG between March and September.

Those comments included calling for the overthrow of the Chinese Communist Party and
Xi, as well as discussing killing top Chinese officials and bombing Zhongnanhai, the
Chinese leadership compound in Beijing, local media reported.

Chow was also said to have called for international sanctions to be imposed on Hong
Kong officials over alleged human rights violations. “[Those working for the] Department
of Justice must be sanctioned, including their family members,” reads one of his posts
written in Chinese, according to the Witness.

In a mitigation letter submitted to the court, the defence lawyer said Chow cared for his
mother, who suffered from depression. Chow committed the offence after being
influenced by radical ideologies online and was remorseful, the lawyer said.

Chief magistrate Victor So said Chow’s online comments had incited violence and
sanctions against government officials and had challenged the authority of the central
government. So said there was a risk that the comments could have incited some
“ignorant” people to take action.

Sedition is not covered by the Beijing-imposed national security law, which targets
secession, subversion, collusion with foreign forces and terrorist acts and mandates up to
life imprisonment. Those convicted under the sedition law – last amended in the 1970s
when Hong Kong was still a British colony – face a maximum penalty of two years in
prison.

Both sedition and national security law trials are handled by judges who have been
handpicked to hear such cases, and are subject to equally stringent bail restrictions.
At least 20 of the more than 30 people charged with sedition have not been activists nor
politicians, but ordinary people, from service industry workers to delivery staff, AFP
reported in July.

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The judge sentenced Chow to four months in jail after reducing the starting sentence by
two months because of his guilty plea.
The prosecution on Thursday argued that Chow’s comments had brought hatred or
contempt or had elicited disaffection against the central government. His comments also
incited others to violence, the prosecution said.