Dennis Ho, a canto-pop star and prominent Hong Kong pro-democracy activist was arrested at her home on Wednesday morning. Ho was one of six people arrested by the city’s national security police in an early morning crackdown linked to an online media organization called Stand News. Police forces later confirmed that a seventh individual had also been arrested. Police accused Stand News and its members of conspiracy to publish seditious material, which is a colonial-era crime. Ho is a former Stand News member and was born in Hong Kong. She later found fame in the early 2000s after releasing a string of hit albums. After her music career, she became a successful actress.
Ho was active in the pro-democracy movement and became a prominent figure in Hong Kong and abroad, appearing before both the United Nations and the US Congress. According to her assistant, police spent more than two hours at her home on Wednesday morning, seizing computers and phones, as well as her identification card and passport. Ho was later transported to a police station. Her arrest was part of a larger operation against Stand News in which law enforcement seized journalistic materials. The incidents raised concerns over the increasingly alarming crackdown against pro-democracy organizations and figures in Hong Kong, as well as the diminishing press freedoms under the National Security Law imposed in 2020.
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