cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/59979677

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[The NGO] Hong Kong Watch addressed an online meeting for stakeholders ahead of the 103rd Pre-Sessional Working Group of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) on China, presenting evidence of the detention, mistreatment and ideological education of children in Hong Kong under the National Security Law. The meeting forms part of the Committee’s preparations for its review of China’s compliance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

During the meeting, our Policy Director Megan Khoo set out how, since the National Security Law took effect in 2020, more than 10,000 people have been imprisoned on protest-related charges, including children. In December 2025, a sixteen-year-old boy was sentenced to forty-two months in prison for attending online meetings and sharing social media posts. The court rejected his age and his autism as grounds for leniency, despite the UN Human Rights Office reminding Hong Kong that Article 37 of the Convention requires child imprisonment to be a last resort.

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Mrs Khoo also highlighted conditions inside juvenile facilities. A September 2025 report, ‘We Were Made to Suffer’: Systemic Abuse and Political Control Inside Hong Kong’s Prisons', by the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation documents systemic abuse, including beatings, extortion and sexual assault by inmates given privileges by guards. The department that runs the prisons controls the complaints process, those who complain describe retaliation, and no independent international body can currently inspect these facilities.

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Beyond the prison walls, national security education is compulsory from the age of six. Books have been stripped from libraries, including 146 titles on Tiananmen Square and the 2019 protests, and a record seventy-one teachers were disqualified in 2024 over lesson content.

Mrs Khoo stressed that these are not isolated incidents but a pattern of violations engaging Articles 3, 13, 17, 19, 37 and 40 of the Convention, and put forward two asks to the Committee:

1. Disaggregated data: Request data on every person under eighteen detained on national security grounds, so the scale of child imprisonment can be understood.

2. Independent monitoring: Recommend that independent monitors be granted access to Hong Kong’s juvenile facilities, given credible allegations of abuse and the absence of any independent complaints mechanism.

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