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       Li Kwai-wah, the senior superintendent of the Hong Kong Police Force's national security department, poses in front of evidence, including the three children's books, before a news conference, July 22, 2021.

       Vincent Yu/The Associated Press

       The scene was almost laughably surreal: Children’s books, with covers featuring cute illustrations of sheep squaring off against wolves, along with plastic figurines and notepads, wrapped in plastic and presented at a police news conference like they were a drug haul.

       Senior Hong Kongpolice Superintendent Steve Li said Thursday that the force had launched an operation targeting “the publishing of seditious publications” intended to inspire hatred against the government and “incite others to violence.”

       The publications in question? Three children’s books depicting a thinly veiled allegory of recent events in Hong Kong, published by the General Union of Hong Kong Speech Therapists.

       One book tells the story of “12 warriors forced to leave their beloved families in the Sheep’s Village because of the Big Bad Wolf,” an apparent reference to a group of protesters who tried to flee Hong Kong by boat for Taiwan but were intercepted by the Chinese coast guard and imprisoned for a time in mainland China. All were eventually returned to Hong Kong to serve prison sentences here for a variety of crimes.

       “There were many kind and brave sheep living in the Sheep’s Village,” reads an English translation of the book seen by The Globe and Mail. “But Big Bad Wolf the leader always brought wolves to abuse the sheep.”

       Supt. Li said the books did not reflect reality and could inspire hatred against mainland Chinese residents of Hong Kong.

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       Police officers escort one of the five suspects detained under suspicion of publishing and distributing seditious material on July 22, 2021, in Hong Kong.

       Anthony Kwan/Getty Images

       “The book showed the sheep as being very clean and the wolves as being very dirty,” he said. “It tried to accuse the mainlanders of bringing in the virus.”

       Four members of the group responsible for the books were arrested Thursday and appeared in court the following day, charged under colonial-era sedition laws – a surprising move given the vast new powers handed to police under the national security law imposed on Hong Kong by Beijing last year.

       “Those publications targeted young kids aged between four and seven … that’s a very crucial age for children to develop their moral and ethical knowledge,” Supt. Li said. “By teaching them white is black and black is white, what will they grow up into? They may end up having criminal intentions.”

       He added that about $25,000 of the union’s assets had been frozen and that police were considering more arrests.

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       The raid sparked alarm and no small amount of mockery in Hong Kong, where people have become accustomed to such crackdowns in the past 12 months, ever since the national security law came into force.

       “This case has rung the death knell of the freedom of creative arts,” the Confederation of Trade Unions, a pro-democracy umbrella group, said in a statement. “Artists are increasingly censoring themselves and even hiding their previous works … law is merely a means for the Hong Kong government to spread fear.”

       Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, tweeted that the Hong Kong government had decided “children’s books about sheep are seditious … wish it was a joke.” Exiled activist Jeffrey Ngo posted a link to coverage of the arrests with the comment “nope, not an article in The Onion.”

       Under Hong Kong’s Crimes Ordinance, which dates from the British era, those found guilty of bringing “into hatred or contempt or to excite disaffection against the person of Her Majesty” can face up to two years in prison. It is unclear why the police chose to use the older legislation rather than the national security law, which criminalizes anyone who provokes “by unlawful means hatred among Hong Kong residents towards the Central People’s Government or the Government of the Region, which is likely to cause serious consequences.”

       Speaking Friday, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam said “foreign forces” have been seeking to encourage anti-Beijing sentiment among young Hong Kongers since the city’s handover to China in 1997.

       “I think it has been a process … if we look at what has driven many Hong Kong people, particularly the young generation, especially those who were born after 1997, in having such a sort of anti-China sentiment,” Ms. Lam told a local radio program.

       Since the passage of the national security law, the Hong Kong government has moved to overhaul the city’s education system, encouraging “patriotism” among young people with flag-raising ceremonies and regular singing of the Chinese national anthem.

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