Hong Kong Bookstore Owner Arrested, Books Seized

0:00On March 24, Hong Kong National Security Police arrested the owner of Book Punch, one of the city's last independent bookshops, along with three, female staff members on Tuesday. They raided the store in Sham Shui Po and seized book's Dean Seditious, including a biography of jailed media tycoon Jimmy Lai. The owner, Pong Yat Ming, faces charges that could mean up to seven years in prison for knowingly selling those publications. Jimmy Lai himself was sentenced last month to 20 years behind bars for a sedition, colluding with foreign forces and other offenses under Beijing's National Security Law from 2020. Mark Clifford, the biographies author and a friend of lies, called the arrest a crew irony, saying they crushed Hong Kong's long tradition of free. Speech. He views threats to bookstores as part of a broader crackdown that breaks promises made after the 1997 handover from Britain. This echoes past scares, like the 2015 disappearance of five booksellers from Causeway Bay Books,

1:01whose sole titles banned on the mainland. One later revealed months of secret detention, sparking global outrage over eroded freedoms. Police say they will handle cases strictly by the law, but as these raids continue, they signal deepening controls on expression in the city. Powered by AI, this is Global News Today.