This is the first sedition trial and conviction against a media outlet since Hong Kong's Handover.
This statement was originally published on hkja.org.hk on 29 August 2024.
On Thursday (August 29), two senior editors of the now-defunct website Stand News, Chung Pui-kuen and Patrick Lam Shiu-tung, were found guilty of “conspiracy to publish and reproduce seditious publications.” They face up to two years in prison under Hong Kong’s colonial era sedition ordinance. Both Chung and Lam spent almost a year behind bars before they obtained bail. This is the first sedition trial against a media outlet since Hong Kong’s Handover.
HKJA believes that the case against Stand News exemplifies the decline of the city’s press freedom, and the damage done to the city’s press and to a media company is irreversible long before the verdict was handed down today.
Independent outlet Stand News was raided by national security police in December 2021. Eight people connected to the publication were arrested, while Chung and Lam were brought to trial. An additional four people were briefly detained by police for questioning or had their homes searched, including Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) ‘s chairperson at the time Ronson Chan, but none were arrested.
Authorities also froze all of the company’s assets totalling $61 million before charges were laid. This immediately dismantled the media company before anyone was found guilty before a court.
At the time, the HKJA expressed deep concern over the apparent heavy-handed response to Stand News’ alleged crimes, and the use of sedition laws against journalists and media outlets. We urged the government to protect press freedom in accordance with Hong Kong’s Basic Law and international commitments.
In HKJA’s annual survey of media professionals conducted in 2022 following the Stand News raid, 97% of respondents said the case was damaging to press freedom.
After a presiding judge was replaced at the last minute, the trial lasted almost 60 days, almost triple the allotted number of days as prosecutors drastically expanded the scope of its examination after the trial opened.
During the trial prosecutors examined Stand News’ reporting, interviews, and opinion articles, and microscopically scrutinised its editors and reporters’ intent.
The government raised the maximum penalty for the crime of sedition from two to seven years earlier this year, which will deepen injuries to Hong Kong’s press using the same tool that the colonial government had once employed to muzzle pro-China press almost a hundred years ago.
Newspaper Ming Pao’s editor-in-chief recently pleaded for its columnists to be cognizant of limits when they penned articles to avoid “danger”, after a government official had warned that printing disclaimers alongside opinion pieces would not protect a media from liability. Separately, the government recently denied a Bloomberg reporter’s work visa application. These incidents are testament to the state of the city’s press freedom today.
Together with the case against Stand News the HKJA believes these incidents demonstrate the severe decline in press freedom in Hong Kong in recent years. We strongly oppose using sedition laws — including those set out in the new Safeguarding National Security Ordinance — to prosecute people exercising their constitutional right to conduct journalism.
