Six people linked to the “Stand News” website were arrested on Wednesday for “seditious publication” in a new attempt by pro-Beijing authorities to suppress the local press.
For the camp of democracy and civil liberties in Hong Kong, this is yet another blow. Online media News stand announced its closure on Wednesday after the series of searches and arrests that targeted several members and former members of its staff in the morning. The site will no longer be updated and will be taken offline soon, he said on his Facebook page. All staff should soon be made redundant.
More than 200 police officers conducted searches at Stand News headquarters in Kwun Tong district and the homes of several media employees. Police said they were authorized by a court to “Search and seize journalistic material of interest”. Six people in total were arrested, for “conspiracy“With a view to disseminating a”seditious publication“. Among them were the publication’s editor-in-chief Patrick Lam, his predecessor Chung Pui-kuen, as well as four board members who resigned in June, including pop star and activist Denise Ho.
The previous “Apple Daily”
“News stand has always practiced journalism in a professional manner. The criminal charges do not change that ”, said Ronson Chan, the deputy editor, who was not arrested despite searches of his personal apartment. Founded in 2014, the site was nominated in November for the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Prize. During the 2019 anti-government protests, several of its journalists had trouble with the police. In an episode that has remained famous, a media reporter filmed live the ultra-violent attack carried out by a group of masked individuals against pro-democracy protesters in a metro station. In recent months again, News stand was the target of strong criticism from the authorities, who accused him of publishing information “Biased, defamatory and demonized” on the city’s prisons.
This crackdown comes as the international community is concerned about the relentless takeover led in Hong Kong for two years by the government. Already, in June, the pro-democracy journal Apple Daily had closed after the freezing of its assets and the arrest of its main leaders under a drastic new law on national security imposed by China in July 2020. On Wednesday, the Committee to protect journalists denounced “an open attack on press freedom already in tatters in Hong Kong“. “News stand represents one of the last vestiges of independent journalism in Hong Kong and we are not sure if it can survive this crackdown», Added Brian Leung, representative of the Hong Kong Democracy Council, based in the United States.
In early December, Reporters Without Borders published a report on the state of the media in China entitled “The Great Leap Backwards”. This devoted an alarming component to Hong Kong. “Since the establishment of the national security law [en 2020], all the bolts have been blown. The executive has a free hand and can interpret the law as it sees fit, because it remains deliberately vague. The daily Apple Daily had to close. Jimmy Lai, its founder, is accused of just about anything and everything. Freedom of the press still exists, even if it is on the way to disappear», Explained, in an interview with Release, the director of the East Asia office of the NGO Cédric Alviani.