Five trade unionists in Hong Kong were found guilty of sedition on Wednesday for producing a series of illustrated children’s books that portrayed the city’s democracy supporters as sheep defending their village from wolves.

The convictions are the latest in a colonial-era sedition offense that authorities used in tandem with a new national security law to stamp out dissent.

The indictment focused on members of a speech therapists’ union who published three illustrated e-books aimed at explaining Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement to children.

In a book called Defenders of the Sheep Village, a group of wolves attempt to occupy a village of sheep, who fight back and drive off their attackers.

In another, wolves are portrayed as dirty, bringing disease to the sheep’s village.

Lai Man-ling, Melody Yeung, Sidney Ng, Samuel Chan and Fong Tsz-ho, all founding members of the union, were charged with sedition and held in prison for more than a year before their sentence.

After a two-month trial, Kwok Wai-kin, a district court judge selected by the government to hear national security cases, found the five guilty of conspiracy to disseminate inflammatory content.

“The inflammatory intent stems not only from the words, but from the words with the forbidden effects intended to result in the minds of children,” Kwok wrote in his ruling.

“Children are led to believe that the PRC (PRC) government comes to Hong Kong with evil intent to take away their homes and ruin their happy lives without even having the right to do so,” he added.

Amnesty International, which recently left Hong Kong over the national security law, called the convictions “an absurd example of relentless repression.”

“Writing books for children is not a crime and trying to educate children about recent events in Hong Kong’s history is not an attempt to incite rebellion,” said Gwen Lee, Amnesty International’s China activist.

During the trial, prosecutors argued that the books contained “anti-China sentiment” and aimed to “incite readers’ hatred of mainland authorities.”

They also said the books should encourage Hong Kongers to discriminate against “mainland Chinese living in Hong Kong”.

The defense argued that the offense of sedition was vaguely defined and that each reader should be allowed to form their own opinion about what the characters in the books represent.

They also warned that a guilty verdict would further criminalize political criticism and have a chilling effect on society.

Until recently, Hong Kong was a bastion of free speech in China and home to a vibrant and open publishing industry.

But Beijing unleashed a full-scale political crackdown on the city in response to huge and sometimes violent pro-democracy protests three years ago.

Sedition was originally a British colonial law and carries a penalty of up to two years in prison.

Until recently, it had not been used for decades.

But it has been adopted by police and prosecutors over the past two years, along with the national security law Beijing imposed on Hong Kong in 2020.

Since then, the city’s once-popular pro-democracy movement has been dismantled.

Most prominent local democracy activists are either in prison, awaiting trial, or have fled abroad.

Dozens of civil society groups, including several unions, have banded together, while a mainland-style censorship rule has been imposed on the film industry.

Books were removed from libraries and curricula rewritten, with authorities instructed to instill patriotism in the city’s children.

Now only people who are considered “loyal patriots” are allowed to run.

Even before the recent crackdown, publishing had become a key target for Chinese authorities.

In 2015, five Hong Kong publishers disappeared behind a bookstore publishing salacious tomes about Chinese Communist Party leaders, later reappearing in custody on the mainland.

The missing bookseller case was itself a partial catalyst for the 2019 pro-democracy protests, which began as a movement against a law allowing extraditions to the mainland’s party-controlled court system.