Hong Kong police arrest 4 for online posts

Hong Kong police on Wednesday arrested four people for pro-independence online posts, citing a newly enacted Chinese national security law.

The four people are between the ages of 16 and 21 and all believed to be students, a police official said Wednesday, according to The Associated Press.

“Our investigation showed that a group has recently announced on social media that they have set up an organization for Hong Kong independence,” said Li Kwai-wah, the superintendent of a new police unit tasked with enforcing the law.

Li did not name the group the four belonged to, saying “They said they want to establish a Hong Kong republic, and that they will unreservedly fight for it.”

“They also said they want to unite all pro-independence groups in Hong Kong for this purpose,” he added, according to the AP.

Although police did not identify the suspects, the student organization Studentlocalism announced Wednesday that four former members had been arrested, including onetime leader Tony Chung.

The national security law, which took effect June 30, cracks down on secessionist and subversive activity in the city. It has been widely condemned as eroding, or outright undoing, the autonomy Hong Kong was promised under the terms of its handover by the British in 1997. The U.S. has announced it will no longer treat the city as an autonomous territory, while the U.K. has suspended its extradition agreement with Hong Kong.

The arrests also came the day after Benny Tai, a leading opposition figure in the city, was fired from his position as an associate law professor at Hong Kong University.

Tai said in a Wednesday Facebook post that he would continue his legal lecturing and writing. “If we continue in our persistence, we will definitely see the revival of the rule of law in Hong Kong one day,” Tai wrote, according to the AP.