Five speech therapists in Hong Kong have been sentenced to 19 months in prison after a court found their children’s books to be “seditious.” These consequences mark China’s pushback against free speech, especially signs of resistance against political figures following the city’s 2019 protests. The authors had pleaded not guilty after having written a series of children’s books about wolves and sheep that the court argued was telling children to fight back against authorities. Now, the five defendants have been jailed, though they may be eligible for early release after a year in prison. Hong Kong has seen many blows to its freedom of speech after the city was handed from Britain to China. Although the city was meant to uphold such freedoms, China’s Communist Party has clamped down on newspapers, publications, and artworks that depict any negative connotations of the government.
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