Walking out of one of Hong Kong’s last remaining independent bookstores, hands behind her back but head held high, the woman’s T-shirt was emblazoned with a simple slogan: “I am a bookstore employee”.
Escorted by police, the woman was among five people arrested during raids on two bookstores last week, suspected of displaying and selling publications with “seditious” content, a national security crime which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years.
Since then, the T-shirt phrase has spread far and wide on Taiwanese social media amid concern for the fate of Hong Kong’s booksellers.
On the social media platform Threads, booksellers, lawmakers and activists shared the hashtag “I am a bookstore employee” to show their support for Hong Kong.
Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te, also weighed in, writing on Facebook: “Ideas and words should never be silenced by political pressure”.
It is the third time in recent months that people in Hong Kong linked to independent bookstores have been arrested.
The Hong Kong authorities have not specified what the allegedly seditious books were in the latest raids.
But after the arrest, Hong Kong’s security chief, Chris Tang, said that booksellers had a responsibility to ensure their books were lawful, “just like merchants selling food have to make sure their food won’t make people sick”.
All five arrested in last week’s raids have since been released on bail.
The Hong Kong police declined to comment further, but reports that the offending books may have included Let Only Red Flowers Bloom: Identity and Belonging in Xi Jinping’s China, written by NPR journalist Emily Feng, prompted a run on the book in Taiwan.
The Taiwanese publisher, Acropolis Publishing, ordered an emergency reprint of 10,000 additional copies last week.
Sara Sung, a senior editor at Acropolis, said some readers were buying copies as “a statement of democracy and freedom”.
“They’re showing that they will not be silenced or intimidated by censorship from China,” Sung said.
Chang Hui-ju, the owner of Touat Books, an independent bookshop in Taipei, Taiwan’s capital, said she was completely out of stock of Feng’s book.
“Before this, hardly anyone paid attention to it,” Chang said.
“But right after the incident, the book sold out everywhere.” The ban ‘only made me more curious’ Another Taipei store, Kuo’s Astral Bookshop, also sold out of....
