Five Released on Bail After Hong Kong Bookshop Raids

Hong Kong national security police searched two independent bookshops in Kowloon and arrested five people on suspicion of displaying and selling publications with “seditious” content. All five were released on bail two days later. Police have not identified the books or said that either shop was formally sealed.

Officers searched two premises in Mong Kok on July 15 and removed books and other material. The two men arrested were aged 37 and 57; the three women were between 30 and 59. Police said they were suspected of “doing an act with seditious intention” under Section 24 of the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance.

The investigation began after customs officers intercepted books in a shipment sent to Hong Kong from overseas, according to the police statement. Authorities alleged that material displayed or sold in the shops sought to incite hatred against the Hong Kong government, the judiciary and law enforcement agencies. They did not name the authors, publishers or place of origin.

RTHK and other local outlets identified the shops as Have A Nice Stay in Prince Edward and Greenfield Book Store in Mong Kok. Video from the scene showed officers carrying boxes from the premises. One woman taken away wore a black T-shirt bearing the Chinese words “I am a bookstore employee.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists and Taiwan’s The Reporter said the material seized or intercepted included Let Only Red Flowers Bloom: Identity and Belonging in Xi Jinping’s China, by NPR journalist Emily Feng. A traditional Chinese edition was published in Taiwan in April. Hong Kong police have not confirmed that the title forms part of the case, so its precise status remains based on news reports rather than an official list.

Three owners and staff members linked to Have A Nice Stay and two people linked to Greenfield were released on bail on July 17. No charges had been announced by July 21, and police had not disclosed the bail conditions or the date on which they must report back.

Security Secretary Chris Tang said the operation concerned the content of the books, not particular shops. He rejected calls for a list of banned titles and said booksellers were responsible for ensuring that the material they sold did not endanger national security. Tang said the ordinance already defined what amounted to seditious intent.

Have A Nice Stay was founded by former journalists and stocks reporting, history, social affairs and literature. The day before the search, it announced that it would close on Aug. 30, citing financial pressure and difficulty in identifying the legal “red lines” governing what it could sell. The shop said its staff could not read every page of every title or reliably decide which books might be considered problematic.

Greenfield opened in 1976 and is among Hong Kong’s oldest upstairs bookshops. It has long sold literature, history and philosophy published in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Both shops were closed during their normal hours on the day of the searches. Greenfield has not publicly said whether normal trading has resumed, while Have A Nice Stay has not announced a change to its planned closure.

The July operation was the third series of bookstore arrests in four months. Police searched Book Punch in March and arrested its owner and three employees. In June, two people linked to Hunter Bookstore were arrested on suspicion of selling seditious publications and receiving funds from overseas political organisations. Those arrested in the earlier cases were also released on bail.

The Hong Kong Trade Development Council also excluded Elmbook and Luck Win Bookshop from this month’s Hong Kong Book Fair without publicly giving a detailed reason. Elmbook later said it would close its physical shop when the lease expires in April 2027.

Amnesty International said the repeated operations left publishers and writers uncertain about which titles might bring criminal investigation and encouraged self-censorship. CPJ said the arrests also raised press-freedom concerns because some of Have A Nice Stay’s founders had worked as journalists. Both groups called for the investigation to be dropped after the five were released.

Taiwan President Lai Ching-te said freedom of expression and publication in Hong Kong was under pressure. The European and International Booksellers Federation, responding to the earlier Hunter Bookstore arrests in June, said detaining booksellers restricted public access to different ideas. Hong Kong authorities reject such criticism as interference and say freedom of expression does not protect conduct that endangers national security.

Concerns about judicial independence arise from the wider record of national security cases, not from a court decision in the bookstore investigation. Britain’s latest six-monthly report on Hong Kong, published in March, said the broad use of national security laws continued to affect speech, press and association rights, and reiterated the independent judicial power set out in the Sino-British Joint Declaration. The Hong Kong government rejected the report as a distortion of its human-rights and rule-of-law record, saying courts exercise judicial power independently and every defendant is entitled to a fair trial. The bookstore case has not yet reached a court.

Police have still not published an inventory of the books they removed. The investigation leaves unanswered how retailers are expected to review stock without a prohibited-title list, what standards customs applies to books arriving from overseas, and what evidence prosecutors would need to establish seditious intent in a sale.

Sources: Hong Kong Police statement; RTHK; Tang’s July 16 comments; South China Morning Post; Associated Press; The Reporter; Amnesty International; Committee to Protect Journalists; European and International Booksellers Federation; the UK government’s latest six-monthly report; and the Hong Kong government’s response. Police have not published a list of the books involved. The reference to Let Only Red Flowers Bloom is attributed to news and press-freedom reports.