New Delhi, July 17 -- HONG KONG - By midday Wednesday, national security officers were moving between the shelves of Have a Nice Stay, a small independent bookshop in Prince Edward, pulling volumes and stacking them for seizure. Across the city in Mong Kok, officers did the same at Greenfield Book Store. By the end of the day, five people had been arrested and an unknown number of books removed from two of the few remaining physical spaces where Hong Kong's pre-2020 appetite for political literature could still be satisfied.

Hong Kong police confirmed Thursday that three women aged between 30 and 59 and two men aged 37 and 57 had been arrested on suspicion of doing an act with seditious intent. All five were arrested at the two stores, w...