• Five Hong Kong speech therapists were sentenced to 19 months in prison
•  Sentencing comes amid a crackdown on civil liberties since China enacted a new national security law in 2020.
• Judge appointed by the government concluded that they were “a brainwashing exercise.

Five Hong Kong speech therapists were sentenced to 19 months in prison each after being found guilty of publishing “seditious” children’s books.

Authorities interpreted the books, which depict sheep attempting to keep wolves out of their village, as a reference to Hong Kong and the Beijing government.

According to the authors, the books chronicled “history from the people’s perspective.”

However, a judge appointed by the government concluded that they were “a brainwashing exercise.”

The sentencing comes amid a crackdown on civil liberties since China enacted a new national security law in 2020.

Beijing claimed that the law was necessary to bring stability to the city, but critics claimed that it was intended to crush dissent and weaken Hong Kong’s autonomy.

Hong Kong is a Chinese Special Administrative Region with a “one country, two systems” policy that grants the city certain liberties.

Lai Man-ling, Melody Yeung, Sidney Ng, Samuel Chan, and Fong Tsz-ho, the five speech therapists, have already spent more than a year in jail awaiting the verdict.

Because of the time already served, one of their lawyers stated that they could be released within a month.

The group of 25 to 28-year-olds created cartoon e-books that some interpreted as an attempt to explain Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement to children.

In one of the three books, a sheep village fights back against a pack of wolves who are attempting to take over their settlement.

The five speech therapists insisted on Saturday that the books were intended to help children understand systemic injustice.

However, Judge Kwok Wai-kin charged the speech therapists with sowing the “seed of instability” in the city and throughout China.

They were charged under a colonial-era sedition law, which was rarely used by prosecutors until recently, rather than the 2020 national security law.

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