A Hong Kong political commentator charged with disclosing details of a national security investigation will stand trial in October.

Wong Kwok-ngon, known by his pen name Wong On-yin, appeared at the District Court on Tuesday.

Judge Stanley Chan said the pre-trial review would take place behind closed doors on August 11, and the trial would begin on October 9.

Before the hearing began on Tuesday, Judge Chan told those in the public gallery that police would take down their names if they called out words of encouragement for Wong after the hearing ended.

Chan noted that at the court mention last month, after the hearing ended and he had left the room, people made comments of support to the defendant.

Wong, 72, has been detained since his arrest in December for allegedly divulging in a YouTube video details of enquiries made by police during a national security investigation.

The offence falls under the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, a homegrown security law known as Article 23. It was added to the ordinance in May as part of subsidiary legislation, and Wong is the first to be charged under the new law.

Wong is also charged with sedition over videos posted on YouTube between January 3 and December 6 last year. He plans to plead not guilty to both charges.

The defendant, who continues to represent himself, told the court he had dropped his legal aid application.

Asked by the judge whether he had legal knowledge for self-defence, Wong said he had “three law degrees” and was confident of handling the case.

The prosecution has set aside eight days for its case and plans to go through around 30 commentary videos on Wong’s YouTube channel. The transcripts of the videos run to more than 900 pages.

The prosecution added that it had lined up six witnesses, all police officers.

Wong was taken in by national security police in December, on the same day he was set to appear at a press conference about the fatal Wang Fuk Court fire, which had occurred days before. He was then released.

He was arrested four days later on suspicion of “prejudicing of investigation of offences endangering national security” and “doing an act that has a seditious intention with a seditious intention.”

A Hong Kong man has been jailed for a year under the city’s homegrown national security law after pleading guilty to making seditious remarks on Facebook, including comments supporting Hong Kong and Taiwan independence.

Raymond Chong pleaded guilty before national security judge Victor So at West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts on Tuesday to one count of knowingly publishing publications with a seditious intention – an offence under the city’s local security law, also known as Article 23.

The magistrate handed Chong, a retiree in his early 60s, an 18-month sentence but discounted it by six months after considering his guilty plea.

Chong was accused of making 53 seditious social media posts between March 2024 and November 2025, local news outlet The Witness reported.

The posts involved wording such as “dissolving the Chinese Communist Party is the most important thing” and “Hong Kong independence is within sight.”

He posted on a public Facebook page called “Holy Raymond,” which features the Chinese phrase “Heaven will destroy the Chinese Communist Party, God bless Hong Kong” as its profile picture.

During mitigation ahead of sentencing, his lawyer argued that Chong was a Falun Gong believer who had come to hate the Chinese Communist Party because of false information that the CCP engaged in live organ harvesting.

Chong was merely venting his emotions and sharing his political views, and did not intend to incite anybody or make any real impact, the lawyer added.

The defence also said that, although he had 4,677 followers, “barely anyone responded” to the posts.

So, however, said that the posts related to the case had received a total of over 650 likes and 90 comments, showing that the level of attention paid to his account was not as little as the lawyer claimed.

Article 23, known officially as the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, was passed in March 2024. It targets treason, insurrection, sabotage, external interference, sedition, and theft of state secrets and espionage.

It is separate from the Beijing-imposed national security law. Both pieces of legislation have been criticised by rights groups and activists, but authorities maintain they are necessary for targeting threats to national security.