Hong Kong Civic Group Defies Suppression by Setting up Street Booth and Hoisting Black Cloth to Avoid Prosecution

Hong Kong Civic Group Defies Suppression by Setting up Street Booth and Hoisting Black Cloth to Avoid Prosecution
The League of Social Democrats Facebook live screenshot
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A civic organization in Hong Kong, the League of Social Democrats (LSD), set up a booth within a pedestrian zone in Causeway Bay on Aug. 6, distributing publications with the words “disobedience” and explaining various social issues to the public. This group has been prosecuted many times by the Hong Kong government. In order to avoid being charged again by the authorities for illegally displaying banners, it hangs a black cloth on its booth as a “scripture without words.”

The issues raised by the LSD include the government’s proposed HK$2 trillion (US$260 billion) spending to develop artificial islands and the northern metropolis, population aging, and people’s livelihood. Before the implementation of the national security law, these issues in Hong Kong were widely discussed in the public domain. But today, such space for free speech in Hong Kong has been severely reduced.

Ms. Chan Po-ying, chairperson of the League of Social Democrats, said that the government’s charge of  “illegal display of banners” was originally intended to maintain hygiene in the public areas and to prevent banners on the roadside railings from obstructing the view of vehicles, but that the LSD’s display of printed banners even in the pedestrian zone was also subject to prosecution, with a fine that can go as high as HK$10,000 (US$1,300).

Ms. Chan said that in their earlier lawsuit, a Food and Environmental Hygiene Department (FEHD) officer admitted that in the past two years, the government had prosecuted roadside railing banners and street booth banners with the relevant laws. Ms. Chan, therefore, believes that the government is using this law to attack dissidents and suppress all peaceful expression of opposition voices in public.

Another group that suffered the same fate is Falun Gong. In the past ten years, the FEHD has prosecuted Falun Gong members for setting up street booths on the same grounds.

Falun Gong is still a legal organization in Hong Kong. Since they were suppressed by the CCP in 1999, they put up street booths in Hong Kong until 2021, telling people the truth about the persecution of Falun Gong and the large-scale crime of organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners by the CCP.

In 2013, then Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying began to prosecute Falun Gong.

In the judgment granted by the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal in 2021 on the case, it was stated that exhibits with “some degree of permanence and habitual regularity” are eligible for the conviction of “displaying posters on government land without permission.”

Falun Gong practitioners continue to distribute leaflets on the streets of Hong Kong to this day. But due to multiple prosecutions by the Hong Kong government, they can no longer display posters on the streets as often as before.