HONG KONG (Reuters) – Hong Kong executive chief Carrie Lam said on Tuesday she could not accept insinuations that press freedom in China’s special administrative region was threatened with “extinction” days after a search conducted at the headquarters of an independent news site.
Stand News announced last week that it had ceased its activities following a search of its offices, the freezing of its assets and the arrest of several of its executives for “seditious publication”.
Citing the deteriorating climate in the media sector, the independent news site Citizen News announced on Sunday that it would close this week.
“I read this morning information, because of the closure of an online media, that press freedom in Hong Kong is threatened with extinction (…) I cannot accept this type of allegation” Carrie Lam said at a weekly press conference.
Civil rights groups and some Western governments denounce an erosion of freedoms in Hong Kong since the former British colony was handed over to China in 1997.
Beijing has stepped up its control over the special administrative region with the adoption, in the summer of 2020, of a new national security law.
The Hong Kong government denies carrying out a crackdown on the press and harming freedoms in the territory.
(Report Edmond Ng and Donny Kwok; French version Jean Terzian)
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