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Movers collect boxes of evidence after a police search at the office of Stand News on Dec. 29, 2021, in Hong Kong.TYRONE SIU/Reuters

Police in Hong Kong arrested veteran journalist Allan Au in an early morning raid Monday, months after his former employer Stand News was forced to close and multiple executives charged.

According to public broadcaster RTHK, Mr. Au is suspected of breaching Hong Kong’s colonial-era sedition legislation, which has become an increasingly common tool used against the city’s civil society and pro-democracy opposition.

Multiple reports said Mr. Au’s arrest was related to the case against Stand News. The pro-democracy online publication closed in December last year after more than 200 police officers raided its headquarters, seizing materials and detaining seven people. Two former editors, Chung Pui-kuen and Patrick Lam, were subsequently charged with sedition. They have been denied bail and are due to appear in court for a procedural case later this week.

Other former Stand board members, including Canadian-Hong Kong popstar Denise Ho, are also facing charges but have been released on bail.

As well as writing for Stand News, the 54-year-old Mr. Au was formerly a radio host for RTHK, but was fired last year after the government moved to secure greater control over the broadcaster, pushing out many veteran journalists and commentators deemed too critical.

A graduate of the prestigious Knight Fellowship at Stanford University, Mr. Au also taught a class at the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s journalism school, focusing on “media censorship and self-censorship.”

Mr. Au’s arrest is just the latest development in a sweeping crackdown targeting Hong Kong’s independent media and pro-democracy opposition that has seen dozens of former lawmakers and activists arrested, civil society groups forced to close and media executives facing years in prison.

According to Eric Lai and Thomas Kellogg, legal researchers at Georgetown University, 183 people have been arrested for national-security offences since July, 2020 – when Beijing imposed a new law on Hong Kong criminalizing secession, subversion and collusion with foreign forces. Almost all, they say, were engaged in activities “that would be considered peaceful and constitutionally protected exercise of basic political and civil rights in other jurisdictions.”

In a report last week, Mr. Lai and Mr. Kellogg noted that nearly a third of national-security arrests involved speech crimes.

“These cases make clear that limits on free speech extend well beyond a narrow list of pro-democracy slogans and calls for Hong Kong independence,” they write. “They also signal that the government is adapting and expanding its censorship regime to accord with its perception of its need for social control.”

Mr. Au himself commented on this growing control and pressure to self-censor felt by many journalists in a blog post late last month. Referencing Hong Kong’s current COVID-19 crisis, Mr. Au said he was “not afraid of the virus, but the risk of writing is inescapable.”

As more and more publications have closed or refuse to publish him, Mr. Au said, fewer people have been able to read his writing, meaning “the cost is high, the benefit is low, and they can accuse you of ‘incitement’ at every turn, leading you to be speechless.”

The sedition law, which Mr. Au is reportedly accused of breaking, criminalizes acts that “excite disaffection against … the Government of Hong Kong.” In his blog post, Mr. Au noted that such speech crimes are predicated on “how society views the relationship between its rulers and the people.”

“If in a society, the rulers regard themselves as supreme … then it must be wrong to criticize them publicly,” he wrote. “If a society regards the rulers as public servants who work for the people … public criticism is only to correct the mistakes of their own servants.”

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