Wednesday, December 29, 2021
Editor-in-chief in handcuffs
Hong Kong police arrest journalists
Hong Kong police have been cracking down on pro-democracy media since months of mass protests in 2019. Several journalists are now being taken into custody once again. 200 officers are working for this.
The Hong Kong authorities have arrested six current and former employees of a news site. The police said more than 200 officers were on duty to search the office of “Stand News”. An AFP reporter saw the editor-in-chief, Patrick Lam, being led into the office building in handcuffs. “Stand News” is the second media company in Hong Kong, after “Apple Daily”, to be targeted by the judiciary.
A video streamed live on the organization’s Facebook page showed police officers standing in front of editor Ronson Chan’s door early Wednesday morning. They told Chan that they had a warrant against him for “conspiracy to publish seditious publication”. The legal basis for these allegations dates back to when Hong Kong was a British colony.
Chan, who is also the chairman of the Hong Kong Journalists’ Association, was not arrested. However, according to media reports, lawyer and former MP Margaret Ng and former editor-in-chief of Stand News, Chung Pui-kuen, were among those arrested. Pop singer Denise Ho, who, like Ng, sat on the nonprofit company’s board of directors until her resignation in June, was also arrested, according to her Facebook page.
Accusation: “Defamatory” reporting
The Hong Kong authorities have repeatedly criticized Stand News. For example, security chief Chris Tang recently accused the site of publishing “biased, slanderous and demonizing” reports of detention conditions in Hong Kong.
In Hong Kong there had been mass protests against Beijing’s growing influence for months in 2019. Since then, the authorities have been acting with increasing severity against critics in the Special Administrative Region. The so-called Security Act came into force in July 2020. It allows the authorities to crack down on any activity that they believe threatens China’s national security. This includes all activities that China regards as calls for secession, subversion, collusion with foreign forces, and terrorism.
Earlier this year, the pro-democracy Apple Daily was forced to shut down after its assets were frozen and its executives arrested. The 74-year-old owner and democracy activist Jimmy Lai is also in jail.