Hong Kong libraries remove books for 'violating' national security law

Public libraries in Hong Kong have been quietly removing books from the shelves deemed politically "sensitive" under a national security law imposed on the city by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP). More than 100 titles -- many of them referencing the 1989 Tiananmen massacre -- are believed to have disappeared from Hong Kong's network of public libraries since the law took effect on July 1, 2020.

While the city's leisure and cultural services department has made a list of more than 70 books deemed to be in breach of the law, which criminalizes public criticism of the Hong Kong and Chinese authorities, regular readers have spotted many more, according to local media reports. Stand News, the Ming Pao newspaper and the English-language Hong Kong Free Press (HKFP) have listed books by jailed 2014 protest leader Joshua Wong, as well as dozens of books about the 1989 student-led protests in Tiananmen Square, and the June 4 massacre by the People's Liberation Army that ended them.

While some books about the 1989 pro-democracy movement remain on library shelves, the number of copies has been slashed, forcing readers to order them via an inter-library loan scheme, the HKFP reported on Nov. 21.

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