Hong Kong: Veteran Radio Host Sentenced For Peaceful Activism
Edmund Wan, better known as “Giggs”, is a veteran internet radio host and public affairs commentator. Prior to his arrest, he was the host of four shows on a local independent online radio station in Hong Kong. Wan also commented on current affairs on his social media platforms and paid membership platform. Other than making comments critical of the Hong Kong and Chinese central authorities, he started a fundraiser for sponsoring the education of Hong Kong youths in Taiwan in February 2020. These youths had fled the city for Taiwan as the Hong Kong government arrested tens of thousands of young people who took part in the 2019 protests.
On 21 November 2020, Wan was arrested under Article 21 of the Hong Kong National Security Law for providing financial assistance for the commission by other persons of secession. However, on 8 February 2021, Wan was officially charged with four counts of ‘doing an act with a seditious intention’. He was further charged on 10 May 2021 with an additional five counts of money-laundering and one count of conspiring to commit an act with a seditious intention. In May 2022, the prosecution reached a plea deal with Wan, under which six of the ten charges he was facing would be kept on file but not prosecuted if he pleaded guilty to the remaining charges and agreed to the prosecution’s application to confiscate the fundraising proceeds.
On 7 October 2022, Wan was sentenced to 32 months’ imprisonment for one count of sedition and three counts of money laundering. As agreed in the plea deal, the court ordered the confiscation of HK$4.87 million (about US$620,000) of the proceeds Wan fundraised for the young Hong Kong protesters in Taiwan. Wan had been detained for more than 19 months prior to his sentencing.
The colonial-era sedition charges in Hong Kong have only been resuscitated by the government since 2020. No one had been prosecuted under these charges since 1967. The authorities have weaponized these charges to prosecute political activists, journalists and authors who exercised their right to freedom of expression. In December 2021, executives and board members of the defunct media outlet Stand News were arrested for “seditious publications”. On 6 April 2022, national security police arrested six people on sedition charges because they “caused nuisance” during a court hearing. Two were subsequently charged with sedition for clapping and chanting slogans in court. On 10 April 2022, a journalist was arrested for allegedly publishing “seditious materials”. On 20 April 2022, a political activist was convicted of “uttering seditious words” and sentenced to 40 months’ imprisonment for chanting popular protest slogans such as “Down with the Communist Party” and “Five demands, not one less” in public.
The recent UN Human Rights Committee’s Concluding Observations on the Fourth Periodic Report of Hong Kong, China, has rightly noted that the Hong Kong government has invoked the sedition provisions in the Crimes Ordinance, after decades of disuse, to suppress freedom of opinion and expression. Moreover, sedition provisions are additionally problematic because they are construed as a national security offence, therefore is investigated by special police in the newly established national security department, which have been granted excessive investigatory powers.