A second person has been arrested in connection with a case involving a protest banner found airing on a laundry rack outside a Mong Kok building last week.
Police apprehended a 36-year-old woman on Friday on suspicion of “seditious intent,” according to a statement. The case is being investigated by the national security department.
She has been released on bail, and will report to police late July.
Last Monday, police received a tip from a passerby about a pro-democracy banner hanging outside the window of a tenement building on Fife Street.
The banner had “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times” on it, a slogan that has been deemed illegal since the passing of Beijing’s national security law.
Authorities say the slogan, which was often chanted during the anti-extradition protests in 2019, has connotations with Hong Kong independence and subversion of state power.
Around 20 police officers arrived at the tenement building late afternoon, where they arrested a 40-year-old man for allegedly “uttering seditious words.” The colonial-era offence, written into law by the British government in 1938, was used to criminalize “hatred or contempt or disaffection” towards the monarch.
Separately, police also arrested a 37-year-old delivery worker Saturday over a “Liberate Hong Kong” sticker on his front gate in Yiu Tung Estate in Shau Kei Wan, according to a police statement. The man has been released on bail and will report to police late September.
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