Flowers and slogans can also be sentenced to seven years: Hong Kong's national security court detains three people with the "831" memory, 2019 historical narrative is being incorporated into criminal control

Seven years after the 831 Prince Station incident, Hong Kong has once again entered the national security criminal law enforcement system because of a bunch of flowers and a few slogans.

Hong Kong Police Department announced on September 5The National Security Service took action on 3 September in Hong Kong and Qingdao to arrest two local men and a local woman aged between 33 and

1. Police said the three were suspected of violating Article 24 of the Hong Kong National Security Regulations, i.e. “for incitement to incitement to incitement.”

The police gave the case backdrop: On the evening of August 31, someone stood hand-held outside the Hong Kong Railway Station and shouted the police’s slogan that it was “incitative”.The police further accused those involved of spreading “fake news” with “a lie to attack the government of the Hong Kong Special District and blackmail the police,” with the intention of provoking public hatred of the government and law enforcement agencies.

The Hong Kong media cited the news that the arrested woman was former nine-long city district lawmaker Feng Shui, one of whom was Chen Chun Huang, the other was a man named Tang. "Hong Kong 01" that there were people on the scene that night to live on the Internet.

As of the afternoon of September 5, Fenghui had been granted bail; several Hong Kong media that another arrested man had also left the police station.

But the main concern is not whether the three were finally released on bail, but the Hong Kong police have openly drawn a new criminal boundary for the case.

The police made it clear that the above offences are serious crimes, and the maximum sentence for the first time can be sentenced to seven years in prison.

From sacrifice to incitement: National Security Enforcement has entered public memorial space

Among the cases published by the police, the two most noticeable public acts were: holding flower buds in the hand and shouting slogans.

Simply donating flowers, of course, does not automatically constitute a crime. The core of the police accusation is that the persons involved in the process spread the "fake news" identified by the police, and has the so-called "incitement intent".

But the problem is also here.

Police officials have not disclosed what the three men said, which was identified as “fake news”, which factual statement constituted a lie, and what evidence proved the arrested person had a subjective intention to incite public hatred to the government.

Instead, the police first quantified the case with a holistic political and legal judgment:

The so-called “831 incident” has no factual basis and has been used to “spread lies, attack the Hong Kong Special District government and blackmail the police.”

This means that the legal significance of the case has gone far beyond a street commemoration.

How a history is described, how an event is remembered, what a bunch of flowers represents, what a slogan expresses, can all fall into the scope of national security enforcement judgment of “facts”, “lies” and “incitement intentions.”

Once such a judgment goes into criminal proceedings, the general public will face no longer only warning, dispersal or administrative punishment, but possibly a maximum of seven years in prison.

Why “831” still makes Hong Kong authorities so sensitive seven years later

On the evening of August 31, 2019, during Hong Kong's anti-amendment movement, police officers entered the law enforcement station in Hong Kong.

based onSubsequent report by the Hong Kong Supervisory BoardThe police took massive law enforcement and detention operations at Prince Station that night, causing chaos inside the station; the report also records disputes between police, fire and port railway about the handling of wounded, the closure of the station and the disclosure of information.

Following the incident, rumors quickly emerged in Hong Kong about whether someone was killed in the station.

The supervisory committee eventually determined that there was no evidence to support the allegation that “the police killed and covered up the incident at the Prince Station” and cited information from the police, the medical department, the fire department and the port railway, saying no one was killed in the incident.

Therefore, from the public information available at the moment, the specific allegation of death, “Someone in the Prince station was killed by the police,” is not supported by reliable public evidence.

But if the whole “831 Prince Station incident” is simply treated as “without factual basis”, another problem arises.

Because the police entered the Prince station on the night of August 31, 2019, the mass law enforcement, the arrest of demonstrators, the closure of the station, and the intense conflict in the law enforcement process, these events themselves were real.

So, “831” actually contains two different levels:

• One is the fact of "whether someone died that night";
• the other is the use of force by the police that night, whether law enforcement is appropriate, why the incident has long formed such a strong social trauma, and whether the public has the right to continue to commemorate the event.

By mixing the two together, it is easy to spread the denial of a specific rumor to the denial of the entire historical event, public memory, and even political assessment.

This is where the arrest is worthy of caution.

What really changes is the “interpretation of history” power structure.

In Hong Kong in 2019, society can still have a public debate around the Prince's Station events.

Some believe there were deaths, some demanded public shutdown of television, some media investigations, and others accepted police and government explanations.

What was really fierce at the time was public competition between different versions.

Seven years later, this relationship is undergoing fundamental changes.

Today, government agencies with national security enforcement powers are not just involved in interpreting “831”, but are directly determining through criminal law which claims can be publicly expressed, which claims can be classified as “fake news”, and which expressions can be further identified as “inciting intentions”.

This actually combines the right to interpret history with the right to punish.

For any society, this is an extremely important systemic change.

Because, of course, the government can refute what it thinks is wrong, publish evidence, and ask the media to correct the wrong facts.

But when governments continue to use the National Security Criminal Law to deal with controversial expressions about the government’s own history of law enforcement, power relationships are no longer reciprocal.

On the one hand, the police, the investigation, the search, the arrest, and the prosecution; on the other hand, it may be just an ordinary person who offers flowers at the subway station.

In such a structure, criminal risk itself is likely to have a strong frostbite effect.

The National Security Regulation is Expanding the Criminal Risk of Political Expression

After Hong Kong completed the National Security Regulations legislation in 2024, "incitement intent" became an important criminal concept in Hong Kong's national security legal system.

The article 24 cited by the police in this case is precisely the provision concerning acts of incitement.

It is worth noting that the police did not accuse the three of them of committing violence, planning attacks, destroying facilities, or spying, stealing or providing state secrets to foreign organizations.

At the core of public cases are speeches, memories and historical narratives.

This means that the practical scope of national security law in Hong Kong is further entering the fields of political expression and social debate in the past.

As a result, whether an act is a crime no longer depends only on “what has been done” but may also depend on:

• What said;
• How to evaluate the government;
• How to describe 2019;
• What attitude may arise after the public hears these remarks;
• And how law enforcement agencies judge the speakers' "intentions."

This highly dependent on the criminal composition of subjective intentions and political contexts naturally gives law enforcement a greater space for interpretation.

And when the maximum sentence reaches seven years, this space of interpretation itself is sufficient to change the behavior of the whole society.

From clearing the protest site to clearing the memory of the protest

Since 2019, the political environment in Hong Kong has changed dramatically.

Mass demonstrations on the streets have largely disappeared, opposition parties and political organizations have shrunk, many activists have been arrested, sentenced or left Hong Kong, and the electoral system has also undergone a comprehensive restructuring.

But even if the political movement disappears from the streets, it does not mean that the relevant memories will disappear immediately.

Flowers, anniversaries, old photographs, songs, slogans, and personal narratives of past events often become the last public traces left after the political movement’s retreat.

Therefore, this time the arrest around the Prince Station has a special symbolic significance.

If previous national security governance mainly dealt with organizations, elections, street protests and political mobilization, it is now increasingly directly entering the field of “how people should remember the past.”

That’s why “831” is still important.

Authorities are really facing not just that night on August 31, 2019, but whether 2019 as a public memory can still exist.

Hong Kong is facing a deeper problem than “831 True Fake”

Whether someone died at the Prince Station could continue to be discussed on the basis of evidence.

Any specific allegations of death that lack evidence should also be subject to fact-checking.

But whether a society will allow citizens to question the government, discuss the law enforcement, and commemorate political events is a completely different question.

Fact-checking cannot automatically equate to a criminal prohibition, and refuting rumors cannot naturally derive from a comprehensive suppression of different political memories.

Especially when the suspects themselves are the government and the police, and the government at the same time has the criminal enforcement power to decide which statements are suspected of “attacking the government” and “blaming the police,” the question is not only whether a certain phrase is true or not.

What really needs to be asked is:

How much space does Hong Kong have to openly discuss the history of which the Hong Kong government is unwilling to be discussed?

These three arrests in September 2026 have given a very warning response.

The flowers did not disappear.

“831” did not disappear because seven years have passed.

But in Hong Kong today, continuing to publicly remember it may have already paid a far heavier legal cost than it was seven years ago.