The most dangerous job in Hong Kong

Rome. On Wednesday, during the opening day of the Hong Kong Book Fair, police raided two small independent bookshops in the Kowloon district and arrested five people – two men and three women – on charges of selling publications containing ‘seditious content’ that incited hatred against the government. The Secretary for Security, Chris Tang, said that the profession of bookseller entails a responsibility to “ensure that the books they sell do not endanger national security”, in the same way that a food vendor ensures that their goods are not past their sell-by date or spoiled, referring to booksellers as “criminals” who must not be allowed to go unpunished. This is the third time in a few months that the Hong Kong police have arrested independent bookshop owners under the 2024 National Security Law; if convicted, they face up to seven years in prison.

One of the two bookshops raided, Have a Nice Stay, was founded and run by local journalists after their newspaper had been shut down in 2021 using the same method. They had reinvented themselves and persevered, but a few days ago they announced on social media that they would be closing on 30 August, citing financial reasons, the social climate and an “elusive red line” regarding material deemed “problematic”. On the same charge, former district councillor Leticia Wong was arrested last month at her bookshop, Hunter Bookstore, and in March, four employees of Book Punch bookshop were arrested; among the books in question was the biography of Jimmy Lai, the story of the founder of Apple Daily who was sentenced in February to twenty years in prison. Before the 2019 protests and the introduction of the law that has silenced all forms of dissent, the term “banned books” did not exist in Hong Kong, because they were already everywhere: all literature censored in the People’s Republic of China would, within a few months, become bestsellers in the former British colony. Now the Hong Kong police say there is no list of illegal books, because the problem lies not with the titles but with the content.