Hunter Bookstore in the Crosshairs
On June 24, Hong Kong’s national security police raided an independent bookshop in the working-class Sham Shui Po district. Officers arrested its founder, Leticia Wong Man-huen (黃文萱), 33, and an unnamed 32-year-old man who worked with her. Both were held on suspicion of “committing acts with seditious intent” under Article 24 of the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, a 2024 law often used to target government critics. Wong was also accused of laundering money allegedly received as remittances from a foreign political organization.
Wong’s arrest is the latest in what appears to be an extended national security push against the activities of independent booksellers in the city. In March, national security police raided Book Punch (一拳書館), whose founder faced similar sedition allegations.
The Collective (集誌社), an investigative Hong Kong outlet, reported that officers tore down a sticker outside the shop and lowered its shutters. Last July, Wen Wei Po (文匯報), a newspaper run by the Chinese government’s Central Liaison Office in Hong Kong, accused Wong of “soft resistance” (軟對抗) through events at the bookstore, including talks, film screenings, and an independent publishing fair held with unnamed government critics. The shop had also sold a biography of Jimmy Lai, the jailed founder of Apple Daily, who was sentenced in February to 20 years in prison for “colluding with foreign forces.”
The raid follows years of pressure on Hong Kong’s shrinking independent bookselling community, a trend that has accelerated since China imposed a national security law on the city in 2020. Wong is a former district councilor, an elected local government post, who resigned in June 2021 and was previously affiliated with the now-disbanded pro-democracy Civic Party.