A Hong Kong court convicted two former editors of a shuttered news outlet yesterday, in a sedition case that is widely seen as a barometer for the future of media freedom in the territory once hailed as a bastion of free press in Asia.
Stand News former editor-in-chief Chung Pui-kuen (鍾沛權) and former acting editor-in-chief Patrick Lam (林紹桐) were arrested in December 2021. They pleaded not guilty to the charge of conspiracy to publish and reproduce seditious publications. Their sedition trial was Hong Kong’s first involving media since the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
Stand News was one of the territory’s last media outlets that openly criticized the government amid a crackdown on dissent that followed massive pro-democracy protests in 2019.
Photo: EPA-EFE
It was shut down just months after the pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper, whose jailed founder Jimmy Lai (黎智英) is fighting collusion charges under a sweeping national security law enacted in 2020.
Chung and Lam were charged under a colonial-era sedition law that has been used increasingly to crush dissidents. They face up to two years in prison and a fine of HK$5,000 (US$641) for a first offense.
Best Pencil (Hong Kong) Ltd, the outlet’s holding company, was convicted on the same charge. It had no representatives during the trial, which began in October 2022.
Judge Kwok Wai-kin (郭偉健) in his written judgement said that Stand News became a tool for smearing the Beijing and Hong Kong governments during the 2019 protests.
“When speech, in the relevant context, is deemed to have caused potential damage to national security and intends to seriously undermine the authority of the Chinese central government or the Hong Kong government ... it must be stopped,” he said.
The case was centered on 17 articles. Some promoted “illegal ideologies,” or smearing the security law and law enforcement officers, prosecutors said.
Judge Kwok found that 11 of the articles carried seditious intent, including commentaries written by activist Nathan Law (羅冠聰) and esteemed journalists Allan Au (區家麟) and Chan Pui-man (陳沛敏). Chan is also Chung’s wife.
Chung appeared calm after the verdict was handed down, while Lam did not appear in court due to health reasons. The pair were given bail pending sentencing on Sept. 26.
Defense lawyer Audrey Eu (余若薇) read out a mitigation statement from Lam, who said Stand News reporters sought to run a news outlet with fully independent editorial standards.
“The only way for journalists to defend press freedom is reporting,” Eu quoted Lam as saying.
Eu did not read out Chung’s mitigation letter in court. However, local media quoted his letter, in which he wrote that many Hong Kongers who are not journalists have held to their beliefs, and some have lost their own freedom because they care about everyone’s freedom in the community.
“Accurately recording and reporting their stories and thoughts is an inescapable responsibility of journalists,” he wrote.
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
The Taiwanese passport ranked 33rd in a global listing of passports by convenience this month, rising three places from last month’s ranking, but matching its position in January last year. The Henley Passport Index, an international ranking of passports by the number of designations its holder can travel to without a visa, showed that the Taiwan passport enables holders to travel to 139 countries and territories without a visa. Singapore’s passport was ranked the most powerful with visa-free access to 192 destinations out of 227, according to the index published on Tuesday by UK-based migration investment consultancy firm Henley and Partners. Japan’s and
A Ministry of Foreign Affairs official yesterday said that a delegation that visited China for an APEC meeting did not receive any kind of treatment that downgraded Taiwan’s sovereignty. Department of International Organizations Director-General Jonathan Sun (孫儉元) said that he and a group of ministry officials visited Shenzhen, China, to attend the APEC Informal Senior Officials’ Meeting last month. The trip went “smoothly and safely” for all Taiwanese delegates, as the Chinese side arranged the trip in accordance with long-standing practices, Sun said at the ministry’s weekly briefing. The Taiwanese group did not encounter any political suppression, he said. Sun made the remarks when
BROAD AGREEMENT: The two are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff to 15% and a commitment for TSMC to build five more fabs, a ‘New York Times’ report said Taiwan and the US have reached a broad consensus on a trade deal, the Executive Yuan’s Office of Trade Negotiations said yesterday, after a report said that Washington is set to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent. The New York Times on Monday reported that the two nations are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent and commit Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to building at least five more facilities in the US. “The agreement, which has been under negotiation for months, is being legally scrubbed and could be announced this month,” the paper said,
RSS