Sawt Falasteen - Hong Kong police raid independent bookstore run by former journalists

Officers led a woman in handcuffs to a van and took away several boxes of materials from the Have A Nice Stay bookshop.

Police said its National Security Department searched two shops after being alerted to books with "seditious intention" found in a shipment from overseas.

Officers arrested five people under suspicion of displaying and offering for sale items with "seditious intention", police said in a statement.

The offence is punishable with up to seven years in prison under Hong Kong's homegrown national security law, which was enacted in 2024 in addition to legislation imposed by Beijing after pro-democracy protests paralysed the financial hub in 2019.

The police statement did not name the two shops, but AFP reporters witnessed the raid on Have A Nice Stay, and local media, citing unnamed sources, said officers had searched the Greenfield Book Store.

Greenfield was closed when AFP reporters visited during opening hours.

The operation came a day after Have A Nice Stay said it would close in August, citing reasons including the social environment and its financial situation.

"Given the economic situation across Hong Kong as a whole, we can only pessimistically conclude that it will be very difficult to keep going," the bookstore said in a statement on Tuesday.

Wednesday's raid is the third time independent booksellers have been targeted this year.

Two employees of Hunter bookstore were arrested last month, adding to four workers at Book Punch apprehended in March for selling "seditious" publications.

"The targeting and arrests of booksellers in Hong Kong expose what the Chinese government fears most: free thinking," said Yalkun Uluyol, China researcher at Human Rights Watch.

"Beijing is trying to impose a world where people think only what the authorities permit."

Have A Nice Stay bookshop was founded in 2022 by a group of former journalists under an increasingly constrained media environment.

Many of the books on sale focus on media literacy, democratic development and authoritarianism.

It also sells publications and merchandise produced by local media outlets and journalists.

Sum Wan-wah, a veteran journalist who co-founded the shop, told AFP in 2023 it offered a "precious" space for Hong Kong's civil society "because we don't have many groups and venues left".

The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the latest raids, urging authorities to "stop treating publishing activities as threats to national security".

Beh Lih Yi, the group's Asia-Pacific director, said that Hong Kong was "turning itself into an international joke" by targeting booksellers on the same day the city's annual book fair -- one of Asia's largest -- opens.

Authorities have imposed restrictions on publications allowed at the fair since the national security laws were enacted.

L.Hussein--SF-PST