Five speech therapists in Hong Kong were sentenced to 19 months in prison on Saturday after they published a series of children’s books that the court said instilled a hatred of the government in young readers.

Their sentence extended a government crackdown on political dissent that began during mass protests in 2019.

The defendants — Manling Lai, Melody Yeung, Sidney Ng, Samuel Chan and Tsz-ho Fong — who were the leaders of a speech therapists’ union behind the books, have been in jail for more than a year.

Because of the time served, their lawyers said they were likely to be released fairly soon. The Hong Kong police’s national security department arrested them last year, accusing them of violating a colonial-era law on seditious publications.

Prosecutors said that the defendants’ series of three books, titled Sheep Village, about a flock of sheep resisting the tyrannical rule of a wolf pack, could “weaken” Beijing’s sovereignty over Hong Kong by portraying the Chinese government as authoritarian.

One of the books told the story of a village of sheep that was harassed by wolves and fled in a boat, only to be captured and sent to prison.

The sheep were said to represent 12 activists who were arrested at sea in 2020 while trying to escape to Taiwan during the Hong Kong protests — and the wolves by inference were the Hong Kong police.

In another book, the sheep organise to push the wolves, portrayed as dangerous, out of their village.

That book was released in early 2020 when Hong Kong’s opposition camp was lobbying the government to close the border with mainland China to control the spread of the coronavirus.

A court convicted the five defendants on Wednesday under the 1938 sedition law.