Construction worker pleads guilty to distributing ‘seditious’ materials, including calls to boycott ‘patriots only’ polls

“A 55-year-old man has pleaded guilty to making and distributing “seditious” materials, including ones that called for a boycott of the patriots only legislative elections last year. West Kowloon Law Courts Building. File photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP. Raymond Wong Chan-fai, a construction worker, in Kwun Tong, was charged and brought to the West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts on Thursday afternoon. He was arrested by national security police on April 21, the statement said. His arrest was not known to the public before, as police did not issue information about it at the time. Wong was charged with two counts of “doing with a seditious intention an act or acts that had a seditious intention,” an offence under Hong Kong’s homegrown national security law, also known as Article 23. According to a court document, Wong was accused of making “paper sheets written with statements” and throwing them “into a public space” from a 12th floor flat in Kwun Tong’s On Tat Estate. The first count of the sedition offence was dated October 2, 2024 and the second one was dated December 5, 2025. Local media reported that on October 2, 2024, a Kwun Tong district councillor found pieces of paper with phrases including “blow up corrupt police officers” scattered on the estate’s podium. The district councillor called the police and handed over 41 sheets of paper to him. On Tat Estate, a public housing estate located in Hong Kong’s Kwun Tong. File Photo: Wikipedia Commons. On December 5 last year, two days before the patriots only Legislative Council elections, a staff worker at the estate’s property management company found sheets of paper reading “liberate Hong Kong, do not vote,” also on the estate’s podium. Police were called, and they seized 16 pieces of paper with seditious phrases. Wong’s fingerprints were found on two of them. Wong pleaded guilty on Thursday. The case was adjourned to June 9 for sentencing to await his background report, social welfare report and psychological report. Sedition is punishable by up to seven years in jail. If the defendant is found to have colluded with an “external force” when committing the offence, they face a maximum of 10 years behind bars. Jail terms handed down at the magistrate court, however, are capped at two years, or three when a defendant is convicted of more than one offence. The maximum penalty for sedition was increased in March 2024, when lawmakers passed Article 23. Before that, it was punishable by up to two years, when sedition fell under a colonial-era ordinance. Under Article 23, the maximum penalty for sedition was raised to seven years in jail, up from two years, while offenders found to have colluded with an “external force” in committing sedition face a maximum of 10 years behind bars.

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