“Citizens should not have to live in fear simply for expressing personal opinions or possessing publications that haven’t been ruled illegal by the courts,” he wrote in Chinese. …With most of the city’s outspoken civil society groups having disbanded in the wake of the Beijing-imposed national security law in 2020, the Christian group’s statement is a rare public rebuke of the government’s crackdown on independent bookstores. While authorities say police discovered books at the stores that contained content that could provoke hatred against the government, no official list of banned books has been made public. Secretary for Security Chris Tang has said authorities would not release such a list. Choi said not publishing such a list is an “abuse of power and an act that undermines the spirit of the rule of law.”