Hong Kong police have arrested nine men in a joint operation with law enforcement agencies in six other jurisdictions, targeting the production, use and distribution of child pornography online.
The city’s police force said on Monday that Operation Hurdler arrested a total of 326 people in March and April in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea, Thailand and Brunei on suspicion of child porn-related offences and other sex crimes.
The nine men held in Hong Kong, aged from 18 to 61, were arrested on suspicion of possessing child pornography, police said. One of them is also alleged to have sexually assaulted a 12-year-old boy multiple times between 2023 and 2024, police added.
Ferris Cheung, a superintendent of the force’s cyber security and technology crime bureau, said at a press conference on Monday that officers arrested the suspects on April 14, seizing 15 computers and external storage devices, as well as eight mobile phones.
Over 200 child porn videos and photos were found on the electronic devices, Cheung said.
“Initial investigation shows that the suspects downloaded the child porn materials through social media platforms, websites and torrent software, and stored them in their computers or phones,” Cheung said in Cantonese.
One of the suspects, a 28-year-old man, had over 20 indecent videos and photos on his devices and is suspected of sexually assaulting a minor between 2023 and 2024, according to police.
The man allegedly befriended the boy online before meeting him in person and sexually assaulting him. The suspect has been charged with indecent assault and appeared before a magistrate on April 16, police said.
Tip of the iceberg
At the same press conference, police clinical psychologist Michael Fung warned of sexual grooming.
Citing a study jointly conducted by police, the University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Shue Yan University, Fung said 15 per cent of respondents admitted to having consumed child pornography.
The figure represented “the tip of the iceberg,” he said, adding that boys were just as vulnerable to online sexual predators as girls.
Offenders could come from different social classes, with varying income and educational levels, Fung said.
Tam Yik-wun, an acting superintendent of the force’s crime wing support, said that, while police recorded 62 child porn-related cases in 2025 – down from 80 in the previous year – online sexual grooming remained a significant source of illicit content.
Offenders often lure minors into sending them intimate photos, which are then used for blackmail for money or sex, Tam said.
Some children mistakenly believe that sending images through the “view-once” function of social messaging apps is safe, Tam added.
She urged parents to be mindful of their children’s online connections, adding that in some cases, parents had successfully prevented their children from falling prey to sexual grooming by sharing social media accounts.
Cheung said the distribution of child porn has been increasingly transnational, and that police will step up cooperation with counterparts in other jurisdictions in response.
Hong Kong has joined the International Child Sexual Exploitation Database, operated by Interpol and serving a network connecting investigators from 75 countries. The database has identified over 60,000 victims and led to the arrests of over 25,000 offenders, she said.
Under Hong Kong law, possession of child pornography carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a HK$1 million fine. The production or distribution of such material is punishable by up to eight years in jail and a HK$2 million fine.
