Update: HK National Party under legal scrutiny

Apr 24, 2016

by Doreen Weisenhaus with contributions by Rick Glofcheski and Yan Mei Ning (Expanded Second Edition, Hong Kong University Press 2014)


April 24, 2016 (South China Morning Post) — Secretary for Justice Rimsky Yuen says the government is looking into whether advocates of Hong Kong independence broke any laws by setting up a party, after a mainland newspaper called for legal action.

An article in the overseas edition of People’s Daily yesterday cited “legal personnel” as saying that formation of the party constituted incitement to sedition.

“The Secretary of Justice needs to study in detail whether to take legal action,” the article read. It accused radical parties of proposing “armed revolution” while spreading pro-independence ideology on campuses through discussion forums and reading groups….

The comment came amid Beijing’s heightened rhetoric against calls for the city to split from the mainland. After the Hong Kong National Party was founded in March, the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office slammed the pro-independence group as a threat to national security….

Yuen said the government was studying whether the party had violated relevant ordinances, including the companies ordinance, societies ordinance and crimes ordinance.

 

Read full SCMP story here.