Hong Kong man jailed for 1 year over seditious remarks on Facebook

A Hong Kong man has been jailed for a year under the city’s homegrown national security law after pleading guilty to making seditious remarks on Facebook, including comments supporting Hong Kong and Taiwan independence.

West Kowloon Law Courts Building. File photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.

Raymond Chong pleaded guilty before national security judge Victor So at West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts on Tuesday to one count of knowingly publishing publications with a seditious intention – an offence under the city’s local security law, also known as Article 23.

The magistrate handed Chong, a retiree in his early 60s, an 18-month sentence but discounted it by six months after considering his guilty plea.

Chong was accused of making 53 seditious social media posts between March 2024 and November 2025, local news outlet The Witness reported.

The posts involved wording such as “dissolving the Chinese Communist Party is the most important thing” and “Hong Kong independence is within sight.”

He posted on a public Facebook page called “Holy Raymond,” which features the Chinese phrase “Heaven will destroy the Chinese Communist Party, God bless Hong Kong” as its profile picture.

During mitigation ahead of sentencing, his lawyer argued that Chong was a Falun Gong believer who had come to hate the Chinese Communist Party because of false information that the CCP engaged in live organ harvesting.

Facebook. File photo: Bastian Riccardi, via Pexels.

Chong was merely venting his emotions and sharing his political views, and did not intend to incite anybody or make any real impact, the lawyer added.

The defence also said that, although he had 4,677 followers, “barely anyone responded” to the posts.

So, however, said that the posts related to the case had received a total of over 650 likes and 90 comments, showing that the level of attention paid to his account was not as little as the lawyer claimed.

Article 23, known officially as the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, was passed in March 2024. It targets treason, insurrection, sabotage, external interference, sedition, and theft of state secrets and espionage.

It is separate from the Beijing-imposed national security law. Both pieces of legislation have been criticised by rights groups and activists, but authorities maintain they are necessary for targeting threats to national security.