Hong Kong police have stopped and searched several people, including a dentist earlier arrested for alleged sedition, after they briefly stood in silence on a busy street near the spot where an officer was stabbed in 2021 by a “lone wolf” assailant.
Dentist Lee Ying-chi appeared outside the Sogo department store in Causeway Bay with three friends, some of whom were dressed in black, at around 10pm on Monday, the 27th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to Chinese rule.
On July 1 three years ago, as Hong Kong celebrated the 24th handover anniversary, a 50-year-old man attacked a police officer from behind with a knife before stabbing himself in the chest twice.
But Lee denied she and her friends had been mourning the attacker when police officers stopped and searched some of them at a nearby bus stop about 15 minutes later.
“Police asked whether I was mourning or observing a silence, I said no,” she said. “They said videos taken by online media outlets were all evidence.”
Asked what she was doing outside the department store, Lee said: “Well, it is what you think it is,” and declined to elaborate further.
Separately, another woman who was in the same group as Lee was stopped and searched by at least five plain-clothes officers in the Causeway Bay MTR station.
She was released after officers checked her identity card.
“I feel no qualms, I did nothing and said nothing,” she said as she raised her arms during the search.
Another woman dressed in black was seen bowing in the direction of the department store separately, but she left swiftly afterwards.
In the 2021 attack, the police officer suffered a 10cm (four inch) deep wound to his back and a punctured lung. The attacker then turned the weapon on himself. He was rushed to hospital, but later pronounced dead.
Lee, a member of the League of Social Democrats party, was arrested in late May on suspicion of sedition under the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, the city’s domestic security law enacted in March.
She, along with five others, including detained activist Chow Hang-tung, allegedly published seditious materials linked to the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown with the aim of inciting hatred of the local and central governments.
