A 61-year-old woman has been sentenced to three months at a psychiatric hospital for displaying “seditious” signs on a wall outside her flat in Tin Shui Wai.

West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts in Hong Kong, on September 19, 2024. File photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.

The West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts convicted Yang Chau-ki of sedition on Friday morning. Yang told the court one day earlier that she did not intend to incite others, and she simply wanted to express her dissatisfaction over a security guard working in her building.

The retiree was accused of displaying seditious materials between March and November 2024. These included a colonial-era Hong Kong flag, a sign bearing the 2019 protest slogan “Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of Our Times,” and another sign that read: “Expel the Communist Party, expel mainland garbage security guards.”

Yang suffers from schizophrenia and delusional disorder, according to a court-ordered psychiatric report, but she said she understood the charge and legal procedure and was deemed fit to enter a plea.

Principal Magistrate Don So said on Friday that he accepted Yang’s discontent toward the security guard. But he added that the meaning of the words she displayed went beyond that, effectively encouraging others to persist with their demands until the current system is overthrown, Ming Pao reported.

So therefore found the defendant guilty, but he accepted the psychiatric report’s recommendation to hand down a hospital order.

The Hong Kong Police Force headquarters in Wan Chai. Photo: Candice Chau/HKFP.

A sedition conviction in Hong Kong carries a maximum sentence of seven years in jail after the government introduced a homegrown national security law in 2024, increasing the penalty for sedition — a colonial-era offence that previously carried a maximum two-year prison sentence.

Yang’s testimony

Yang represented herself when she appeared in court on Thursday, telling the magistrate that her building’s security guard, a new immigrant from mainland China, was rude to her.

She also accused the guard of sexually harassing her and physically assaulting her after she filed a complaint and she reported the case to police. She said she then began posting the materials outside her flat when the guard was not dismissed.

Yang said she had the right to put up signs on the wall outside her unit because the area is a private space within a private residential estate. She argued that, if the guards had done their duty, no strangers should have been able to come upstairs to see what she had posted, legal news outlet The Witness reported.

Yang said she had no intention to incite others nor to allow anyone other than the security guard to see the signs. She also questioned the legitimacy of Hong Kong’s national security laws.

“The national security laws are problematic, and they are using these illegal means to falsely accuse me,” Yang said in Cantonese.