Political arrests in Hong Kong in 2025 more than double those of 2024
A sharp increase, but still lower than in the years prior to 2024
This article is #17 in the Hong Kong Repression Monitor series, which provides overviews of indicators of repression in Hong Kong, based on research and data collected from 2019 to the present. For more information, see the introduction, which also has a full list of entries in the series as they are published.
UPDATE: On January 8, 2026, a 61-year-old man was charged in court with “sedition” for Facebook posts. He was arrested on November 29, 2025, but the arrest was not previously announced or reported. He was remanded in custody pending trial. His was the 82nd confirmed political arrest of 2025; according to a statement made by Secretary for Security Chris Tang on November 25, there could be as many as 89. Now, in all, 122 people have been arrested for “sedition;” 68 have been charged in court; 61 have been remanded in custody pending trial; 51 have been convicted; 0 acquitted.
UPDATES: On December 15, a 59-year-old man was arrested at Sha Tin racecourse for “disturbing order in a public place” for running onto a horse racetrack with a poster on which these words could be read, “PK Tang, step down,” “Wang Fuk Court fire,” “Hong Kongers, add oil!” and “committee.” In addition, two more arrests have come to light due to appearances in court. On December 11, a 28-year-old was charged in court with “criminal damage” for damaging seven election flags belonging to the pro-CCP Hong Kong Federation of Workers on November 20. On December 16, a 23-year-old plead guilty to “criminal damage” for damaging two government election posters on November 19. The damage was discovered and the man was arrested on November 22. These two arrests are presumably among the those announced on November 25 by Secretary for Security Chris Tang, ten of which could not be accounted for at the time. Finally, on December 14, Hong Kong national security police announced a 10th arrest for “unlawful drilling” (see below for details). This brings the total number of political arrests in Hong Kong in 2025 to at least 81 and as many as 89.
UPDATE: On December 12, national security police announced the arrests of nine people for “unlawful drilling” under the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance enacted in 2024 by the Hong Kong government for “military-style” drilling with imitation knives and guns. The head of the police’s National Security Department said “one or two” of the arrestees had been seen at the scene of the Wang Fuk Court fire “dressed in black-violence attire” (regime-speak for black clothes worn by protesters in 2019) and insinuated that the arrestees may have been attempting to “take advantage” of the fire for political purposes, perhaps preparing for a time when “black violence” might flare again. But the NSD head provided so few details, it appears that either the NSD doesn’t know at this point what this case is really about or is unwilling to reveal the full extent of what it knows. The NSD head says they were “tipped off” by a citizen that people were conducting “military-style” drills in a complex in San Po Kong and that six arrests were made there, three others elsewhere in the city. This brings the total number of political arrests in Hong Kong in 2025 to at least 77 and as many as 87.
As of December 8, there have been at least 68 political arrests in Hong Kong in 2025, and as many as 78. Sixty-eight arrests have been confirmed and itemized. The Secretary for Security Chris Tang said on November 25 that in all 29 had been arrested for attempting to “sabotage” the fake Legislative Council elections.1 At the time, that was ten more arrests than I had recorded or could find sign of in media reports. Taking his tally into account, the total number of political arrests would be 78 for the year, but I only count those I can count.
Below is a timeline of all known political arrests in 2025.
The number of at least 81 and as many as 89 political arrests in 2025 is higher than the 31 in 2024, but much lower than the 104 in 2023, 91 in 2022, 293 in 2021, and 10,202 from 2019 to 2020, for a total of 10,802.
The increase on 2024 is largely attributable to the 40 arrests in November and early December related to the fake Legislative Council elections held on December 7 and to the six arrests related to the Wang Fuk Court fire on November 26 in which at least 161 people had perished. The period around the June 4 anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre was also intensely repressive, with 12 political arrests from June 3 to June 6.
By far the most high-profile arrest of 2025 was of pro-democracy leader Joshua Wong on June 6. Joshua was already in prison, serving his sentence of four years and eight months for participating in the 2020 pro-democracy primary election (“conspiracy to subvert state power” under the national security law). He was projected to be released in January 2027. He was arrested and charged with “collusion with foreign forces” under the national security law as well as “money laundering” for acts allegedly committed way back in 2020. Why was the regime just getting around to charging him now for alleged acts committed five years ago? My suspicion is that it intends to make Joshua a “forever prisoner,” extending his imprisonment indefinitely, along with a few others like Jimmy Lai, Chow Hang-tung and maybe also Lee Cheuk-yan, so as to bolster its narrative that the “rebellion” in Hong Kong in 2019-2020 was driven by a few “black hands,” and their punishment will be to live out their days in prison, as a warning to us all.
The arrests of the brother and father of exiled activist Anna Kwok are especially noteworthy because of their unprecedented nature. Anna is one of thirty-four overseas Hong Kongers for whom the Hong Kong national security police have issued arrest warrants and bounties, supposedly for having violated the national security law. In connection with those warrants and bounties, the national security police have taken in dozens of family members and former associates for interrogation (or, as the police often put it, “to assist in an investigation”). They are usually released within a matter of hours, but this is still a form of hostage-taking: it’s meant to send a message that the family members of exiled Hong Kongers can be made to pay for their crimes. The arrests of Anna’s brother and father is an escalation of that tactic, the first time family members of anyone wanted abroad have been arrested. While her brother was released on bail, her father is currently on trial for the most absurd of reasons: he was trying to close out an insurance policy that he took out for Anna when she was a baby; in other words, he was trying to cut any financial ties to his daughter in order to comply with the law that prohibits financial dealings with wanted individuals, and instead he was arrested and prosecuted on that very charge.
Also related to the Hong Kong government’s campaign of transnational repression, four people in Hong Kong were arrested for their association with the Hong Kong Democratic Independence Union, an obscure group apparently founded in Taiwan. Three of them are being prosecuted for “conspiracy to commit secession” and a 15-year-old (he’s now 16) has plead guilty. It appears these four had come into contact with supposed members of HKDIU online, and their “crimes” consist of little more than that. A 19-year-old woman who appeared in videos promoting another overseas group called Hong Kong Parliament while in Canada was also arrested and prosecuted for doing so when she returned to Hong Kong. She is currently serving a one-year prison sentence for “sedition.”
Near the end of the year, there were five arrests for sedition related to the Wang Fuk Court fire, as the authorities scrambled to contain expressions of discontent and anger and demands for accountability. Twenty-four-year-old university student Miles Kwan was arrested for initiating a petition which called on the government, among other things, to set up an independent Commission of Inquiry, something the regime has so far been unwilling to do. To the regime, a petition garnering thousands of signatures smelled far too much like politics back in the old days before the new authoritarian Hong Kong was established in 2020. Seven-one-year-old Wong On-yin was arrested for discussing publicly his interrogation by national security police, and eventually became the first and so far only one of the five arrestees to be charged, not only with sedition but with “prejudicing” a national security investigation.
Probably the strangest political arrest this year was of Poon Yat-ming for “running an unregistered school,” for which he’s currently on trial. Poon is the proprietor of the independent bookstore, Book Punch. Both he and the bookstore have been incessantly persecuted, as have other independent bookstores in Hong Kong. This is his second prosecution. His first was for “selling alcohol without a license” for serving sake at a reading of a book by a Japanese author. The current trial for “running an unregistered school” relates to the bookstore hosting a Spanish language class.
With that ludicrous trial in mind, it is important to emphasize that some political arrests in Hong Kong are for explicitly political crimes such as sedition, those under the 2020 national security law, and “inciting others not to vote or cast an invalid vote.” The latter became a crime in 2021 as part of “electoral reforms” that were part of an election crackdown that put an end to relatively free and fair elections in Hong Kong. The strange thing about that “crime” is that it actually isn’t a crime to refrain from voting or to cast an invalid vote. It’s not that often that “incitement” to do something that isn’t a crime is a crime. But that’s Hong Kong in a nutshell today. But I digress: I was saying that besides explicitly political crimes, many political arrests are for crimes that on the face of it are non-political but these are politically motivated arrests, the arrest of Poon Yat-ming for “running an unregistered school” being a case in point. To understand these types of arrests as political nature, one must situate them within the wider context, for example, the persecution of independent bookstores and the methods used to persecute.
Of the at least 68 arrested so far this year, 16 have been charged and prosecuted, and nine imprisoned, two of those after having plead guilty and been sentenced (one to 13 months, one to 17 months for “perverting the course of justice” for helping young protesters from 2019 to evade arrest), one of them a 15-year-old remanded to await sentencing after having plead guilty to “conspiracy to commit secession,” one the 19-year-old woman sentenced to a year in prison for “sedition,” and five remanded pending completion of trial.
With still a few days to go in 2025, let’s hope there are no more political arrests….
Elections since 2020 in Hong Kong are “fake” because 1) 47 pro-democracy candidates were arrested for attempting to take part in 2020, 31 of whom are still in prison; 2) the 2020 Legislative Council election was postponed for a year because the regime feared a pro-democracy landslide, as occurred in 2019 3) the electoral system was “reformed” in 2021 to ensure only pro-CCP candidates (so-called “patriots”) can run, and the number of directly elected seats was drastically reduced, for example, in the Legislative Council, from 40 out of 70 total to 20 out of 90. Thus, “elections” in Hong Kong are meant only to reproduce support for the regime and do not in any way represent or reflect the will of the people—in fact, they are structured to ensure just the opposite outcome. Even prior to 2020, Legislative Council elections were far from free and fair, with 30 seats reserved for “functional constituencies,” which were engineered to ensure pro-CCP control. Thus, Hong Kong has never had full universal suffrage or fully free and fair elections, in contravention of the CCP’s promise enshrined in the Basic Law, and never have the people been allowed to directly participate in electing the Chief Executive, but elections have been so much less free and fair in the past five years as to have become nothing but a sham.