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Hong Kong Speech Therapists Jailed over Children’s Books Ruled Seditious

• Bostonian 4y ago
  'None of the defendants opted to give evidence or call witnesses. Defense lawyers argued that the books were merely children’s tales or fables, and that the charge was unconstitutional—that is, inconsistent with the freedom of expression and of speech guaranteed by the city’s Basic Law. In his 67-page verdict, Judge Kwok said he concluded that the books depicted the wolves as evil and the sheep as kind. He said they wouldn’t have been considered seditious if not for specific references in the first book’s foreword to the 2019 protests, months of unrest across the city that began in opposition to an extradition bill. The books would lead children to believe that the government of the People’s Republic of China is made up of wolves and that Hong Kong’s leader is a wolf “masqueraded as a sheep at the direction of the Wolf-chairman,” the judge wrote in his verdict. “The children will be led into belief that the PRC Government is coming to Hong Kong with the wicked intention of taking away their home and ruining their happy life with no right to do so at all,” he wrote.' And we know that's not true. /s