Hong Kong Commission of Customs and Excise Ho Peishan said that the city’s customs agency will amend internal guidelines, and revised training will be provided “in accordance with the Maintenance of National Security Ordinance.” Ho made the comments during an interview on the Hong Kong program Justified on April 6th.
The interviewer asked if bringing “old Apple Daily newspapers, military books, etc. into the country” would be considered a violation of Hong Kong’s national security law, Article 23, Ho said it “depends on the intention.”
The commissioner said that “only when there is reasonable suspicion that a publication has seditious intent, and the traveler has no reasonable excuse, will the case be reported to law enforcement agencies.”
Furthermore, she also said there is currently no need for a specific definition of a list of banned books or “soft resistance” that customs officers can use. Ho then said that the agency would rely on “internal training to continuously instill the latest situation into ‘frontline colleagues’ so they could understand how to deal with the latest situations to safeguard national security.”
