A Hong Kong court on Saturday (September 10) sentenced five speech therapists to 19 months in prison for publishing children's books depicting pro-democracy activists as sheep facing wolves.
They had been found guilty of "sedition" on Wednesday, under a law inherited from British colonization and used by current authorities to stifle dissent alongside the national security law imposed by Beijing in 2020.
Lai Man-ling, Melody Yeung, Sidney Ng, Samuel Chan and Fong Tsz-ho, all founding members of the speech therapists union behind the books, were kept in prison for more than a year before the trial.
The books were published in 2020, just a year after huge, often violent protests by the pro-democracy movement.
On Saturday, facing Judge Kwok Wai-kin, who once again called the posts a "brainwashing exercise", three of the five members said they had no regrets.
The 5 illustrators who drew the Sheep Village Children Book got sentenced for 19 months imprisonment, this will further destroy freedom of artistic expression of Hong Kong, increase self-censorship and escalate brain drain away from Hong Kong.
pic.twitter.com/OUTF7ala2Z
— Kacey Wong (@KaceyWong15) September 10, 2022
Melody Yeung, 28, even assured that she still hoped to be on the side of the sheep.
"My only regret is that I was not able to publish more books before I was arrested," she told the court.
Sidney Ng, 27, said through his lawyer that the lawsuits "had (the) effect of intimidating civil society and alienating Hong Kongers from each other".
Prosecutors had argued that the illustrated books displayed "anti-Chinese sentiment" and were intended to "incite readers' hatred of mainland Chinese authorities".
With AFP
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