Five HK speech therapists jailed over cartoons

FILE - Li Kwai-wah, left, senior superintendent of Police National Security Department speaks in front of a screen showing evidence including the contents of three children's books on stories that revolve around a village of sheep which has to deal with wolves from a different village, before a press conference in Hong Kong Thursday, July 22, 2021. Five Hong Kong speech therapists were convicted of sedition on Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2022, after they printed a series of children’s books about sheep and wolves that a court said was aimed at inciting hatred against authorities. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu, File)

HONG KONG: Five Hong Kong speech therapists were sentenced yesterday to 19 months in jail for conspiracy to publish seditious children’s books, featuring cartoons of sheep and wolves that prosecutors had deemed anti-government.

The five were convicted on Wednesday under a colonial-era sedition law in a case denounced by rights campaigners as a “brazen act of repression”, which the Hong Kong government has rejected.