Hong Kong Watch Briefing on Human Rights Developments: October 2026
This briefing describes developments in Hong Kong in October 2026 focusing on the rapid deterioration of human rights in the city following the imposition of the Hong Kong National Security Law and the passage of Safeguarding National Security Ordinance.
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Executive Summary
October 2026 was defined by the push of national security education into early childhood and primary schools. The police launched NSmarties, a generative-AI platform that lets primary pupils create national security storybooks, videos and quizzes voiced by Security Secretary Chris Tang and Police Commissioner Joe Chow, though the rules governing what it may generate have not been disclosed. Po Leung Kuk appointed 16 “national security tutors”, and a new Security Bureau picture-book series will reach more than 900 kindergartens and public libraries by year-end.
In the courts, Chow Hang-tung and Lee Cheuk-yan appealed their subversion convictions, and Cardinal Joseph Zen, Margaret Ng and three other 612 Fund trustees sought leave to appeal to the Court of Final Appeal. The government lost its bid to overturn Lam Cheuk-ting’s acquittal. Prosecutions again reached vulnerable defendants, including a 61-year-old woman with schizophrenia ordered into compulsory psychiatric treatment for displaying colonial-era flags and protest slogans, and 72-year-old commentator Wong Kwok-ngon, still on trial for sedition and for allegedly revealing details of a national security investigation.
Sedition enforcement and surveillance widened, with journalist Tang Ho-wing’s arrest over the Prince Edward commemorations, a second case of a man charged months after an unannounced arrest, and talks to link private mall CCTV to police’s SmartView network. All 1,115 Election Committee nominees were approved, Hong Kong’s Rule of Law Index score fell again to 0.71, and civil society and cultural space kept shrinking, with the Society for Hong Kong Studies disbanding, the Pride Rainbow Market cancelled for the second time, and a Tom Cruise film pulled from cinemas without explanation.
Abroad, US legislators introduced the Hong Konger Promise of Refuge Act in an effort to give roughly 3,000 Hong Kongers a path to permanent residence before Deferred Enforced Departure expires in February 2027. At least 12 Hong Kongers convicted over the 2019 protests were reportedly refused BN(O) visas in the UK and Taiwan classified paint attacks on a wanted activist’s gym as transnational repression.
Photo: HKSimBHouAA, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons