Hong Kong Police Arrest Five More Booksellers Under Sedition Law, Third Raid This Year

Hong Kong police raided two independent bookshops in the Mong Kok district Wednesday and arrested five people, two men and three women ranging in age from 30 to 59, on suspicion of violating the city's national security law, according to the Hong Kong government's official statement. Officers seized boxes of books from Have A Nice Stay, a shop founded in 2022 by former journalists, and from nearby Greenfield Book Store, according to the Associated Press and video from the outlet The Collective. AFP reporters saw a woman led away in handcuffs from Have A Nice Stay. Police said the five are suspected of "displaying seditious materials" and "selling seditious publications," including content that incites "hatred" against Hong Kong's government, judiciary and law enforcement, according to the government statement cited by the BBC and NPR. Customs officials reportedly flagged the case after finding allegedly seditious books in a shipment from overseas, though police did not name the titles or specify what tipped off customs. If convicted under the sedition provisions, those arrested face up to seven years in prison, the BBC reported. Neither bookshop was named in the official statement. Local media identified them, and neither shop opened during normal hours Wednesday. Calls to Greenfield and to a Have A Nice Stay founder went unanswered, according to NPR and the AP.

A Pattern, Not an Isolated Incident

This is the third round of bookstore arrests in 2026. Police arrested four people connected to Book Punch in March, reportedly over sales that included a biography of jailed pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai, according to Amnesty International. In June, two workers at Hunter Bookstore were arrested. Local media, including the Chinese-language paper Ming Pao, identified one of those arrested as Hunter's owner, Leticia Wong, a pro-democracy former district councilor, according to the Los Angeles Times. Wong told the AP last year that Hong Kong authorities had taken action against her shop 92 times between July 2022 and June 2025, ranging from inspections to warning letters. An anonymous letter to an organization planning an event at her shop led that group to cancel, she said. Have A Nice Stay had already announced, one day before the raid, that it would close on August 30, citing financial difficulties and what it called an "elusive red line" over which books cross into illegal territory. Neither raided shop is participating in this year's Hong Kong Book Fair, which opened Wednesday.

The Government's Position Hong Kong's Secretary for Security, Chris

Tang, has said the government will not publish a list of banned books, arguing such a list would be pointless in practice. Authorities maintain the national security laws, including the 2024 sedition provisions and the broader Article 23 legislation known as the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, are necessary for the city's stability. Beijing and the Hong Kong government argue the 2019 anti-government protests showed the need for stronger security laws to prevent unrest and preserve order in a global financial hub. A government that just watched mass protests paralyze parts of its territory has a legitimate interest in public order, and no country lets citizens incite violence against police or courts without consequence. The problem, according to critics, is that Hong Kong isn't publishing what's actually illegal. Amnesty International's Deputy Regional Director Sarah Brooks said the lack of a defined "red line" is deliberate: "Such ambiguity is intentional: fueling fear and self-censorship, with devastating consequences for freedom of expression." Refusing to specify which books or which content trigger arrest isn't neutral enforcement. It's a vague standard that lets authorities selectively prosecute booksellers after the fact, with no way for shop owners to know in advance whether they're breaking the law. That's a meaningfully different legal environment from a country with published obscenity or incitement statutes that courts interpret consistently. When the government won't say what's banned and reserves the right to arrest people for what's on a shelf, it becomes functionally impossible for a bookseller to comply in good faith.

What's Unresolved Hong Kong was

governed under a promise, made at the 1997 handover from Britain, that it would keep Western-style civil liberties for 50 years. Lam Wing-kee, the former owner of Causeway Bay Books who died earlier this month at 70, became internationally known in 2016 for revealing he'd been detained by mainland Chinese authorities after crossing into Shenzhen, part of a case involving four other booksellers who disappeared in late 2015. None of the five arrested Wednesday have been charged as of this writing. They remain in custody for investigation. Whether prosecutors bring formal sedition charges, and whether any court test emerges over what counts as "seditious" under the 2024 law, remains an open question with the city's next Legislative Council review of the security framework still pending.