Hong Kong Police Arrest Bookstore Owner and Staff for Sedition

Hong Kong police arrested the owner of an independent bookstore and three staff members on Tuesday for allegedly selling seditious publications, including a biography of imprisoned media figure Jimmy Lai. The arrests took place at Book Punch, a store in the Sham Shui Po district, where officers from the national security unit raided the premises and seized copies of the book along with other materials deemed seditious.

Pong Yatming, who founded Book Punch in 2020, and three female employees were detained on suspicion of knowingly distributing publications that violate the city's Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, known locally as Article 23. The biography in question, "The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong's Greatest Dissident and China's Most Feared Critic," was written by Mark Clifford, a former non-executive director of Next Digital, the media company once owned by Lai. Authorities have not yet confirmed formal charges, but the offense carries a potential penalty of up to seven years in prison, or 10 years if linked to collusion with external forces.

Lai, a 78-year-old British citizen and founder of the now-closed pro-democracy newspaper Apple...