HONG KONG — Hong Kong’s police chief warned journalists they
could be investigated for reporting “fake news.” A newspaper controlled by the
Chinese government called for a ban on the city’s biggest pro-democracy news
outlet. Masked men ransacked the offices of a publication critical of China’s
Communist Party and smashed its presses.
اضافة اعلان
Hong Kong’s reputation as a bastion of press freedom in Asia,
home to journalism that is far more aggressive and independent than that found
next door in mainland China, has been under sustained pressure for years.
Now, as Beijing moves to stamp out dissent in the city, the news
media is under direct assault. Traditional pressure tactics, such as
advertising boycotts, have been eclipsed by the sort of bare-knuckles campaign
that could leave prominent journalists silenced and their outlets transformed
or closed.
Recent targets include the freewheeling pro-democracy newspaper
Apple Daily, whose founder was sentenced to 14 months in prison last week, and
RadioTelevision Hong Kong (RTHK), a public broadcaster known for its deep
investigations. On Thursday, one of the network’s prizewinning producers, Choy
Yuk-ling, was found guilty of making false statements to obtain public records
for a report that was critical of the police. She was ordered to pay a fine of
6,000 Hong Kong dollars, about $775.
“We seem to have turned some sort of a corner fairly recently,”
said
Keith Richburg, director of the University of Hong Kong’s Journalism and
Media Studies Center. “Self-censorship is still an issue and not knowing where
the red lines are, but now we see what seems to be more of a frontal assault on
the media in Hong Kong.”
Beijing has long wanted to bring Hong Kong to heel. The city, a
semi-autonomous Chinese territory since the British handed back its former
colony in 1997, played by its own set of rules. Residents enjoyed freedoms
unseen on the mainland, including unfettered access to the internet, the right
to protest and an independent press.
But after large demonstrations in 2019 convulsed the city and
sometimes turned violent, China’s central government seized on the unrest to
crack down. It imposed a tough national security law last year, criminalizing
many forms of anti-government speech. Then it made changes to Hong Kong’s
election system, tightening the pro-Beijing establishment’s grip on power.
Pro-democracy lawmakers were removed from office. The protest
movement was silenced. Activists were jailed. And journalists found themselves
in the government’s crosshairs.
On Thursday, a Hong Kong court found that Choy, a freelance
producer, had broken the law when she used a public database of license plate
records as part of an investigation into a July 2019 mob attack at a train
station in which 45 people were injured. Activists have accused the police of
turning a blind eye to the violence.
The journalist, who also goes by the name Bao Choy, helped to
produce fine-grained documentaries for RTHK that examined who was behind the
attacks and why the police were slow to respond. She was arrested in November
and charged with making false statements about why she had used the publicly
accessible database.
Choy said her case showed how authorities were trying to crack
down on the news media and restrict access to information that was once
publicly available.
“I realized since my arrest it’s not my individual issue,” she
said in an interview. “It’s a bigger issue of press freedom in Hong Kong.”
Press freedom groups have denounced Choy’s arrest and described
it as part of a campaign of harassment. The Committee to Protect Journalists
called the government’s case an “absurdly disproportionate action that amounts
to an assault on press freedom.”
The case against Choy is the latest move against RTHK, Hong Kong’s
leading public radio and television network, which for years offered hard-hitting
reports critical of the government. The outlet’s charter grants it editorial
independence, but as a government entity, it has little protection from
officials who want to see it brought under stricter control. Regina Ip, a
pro-Beijing lawmaker, said last week that the government should consider
closing it altogether.
Just months after the national security law was passed, the Hong
Kong government called for RTHK to be more tightly supervised by
government-appointed advisers.
Reporters Without Borders, the media freedom advocacy group,
said Tuesday that the security law posed a threat to journalists and that RTHK
was “being subjected to a full-blown intimidation campaign by the government
with the aim of restricting its editorial autonomy.”
The Hong Kong government dismissed the claim that RTHK was being
targeted and said it was “appalled” by the suggestion “that people with a particular
profession should be immune to legal sanctions.”
International news outlets have also come under pressure in Hong
Kong. An editor for the Financial Times was forced to leave the city in 2018,
in apparent retaliation for his role in hosting a talk by a pro-independence
activist. The New York Times has moved a number of editors from Hong Kong to
Seoul, South Korea, in part because of problems renewing work visas.
Epoch Times, a newspaper linked to the Falun Gong spiritual
movement, which is banned in mainland China, has dealt with even blunter
attacks. On April 12, four men stormed the paper’s printing plant, smashing
presses and computers. The newspaper said no one was injured, and it was able
to resume publication soon after.
“Epoch Times is not afraid of violent coercion,” Cheryl Ng, a
spokesperson, said in a statement.
Perhaps the most prominent target thus far has been
Jimmy Lai,
the outspoken critic of the Chinese Communist Party who founded Apple Daily,
the pro-democracy newspaper. He was sentenced to 14 months in prison last week
after being convicted of unauthorized assembly in connection with two protests
in 2019. But his legal jeopardy is far from over.
Apple Daily’s newsroom was raided by the police last year, and
Lai faces charges related to the national security law for allegedly calling
for US sanctions against Hong Kong. Under the law, crimes “of a grave nature,”
an intentionally ambiguous term, carry sentences of up to life imprisonment,
but it is unclear whether the charges he faces would fit under this provision.
Ip, the pro-establishment lawmaker, made clear to RTHK
journalists what she believed their role was. In a legislative session last week,
she said a reporter for the outlet should be willing “to be a government
mouthpiece.”
Chris Tang, Hong Kong’s police commissioner, last week warned
that publications that produce “fake news” could face investigation, and he
called for new laws to help regulate the media.
Nevertheless, many reporters say they will not be cowed by the
government’s efforts to stifle their reporting.
“Some are disillusioned,” said Gladys Chiu, chair of the RTHK
Program Staff Union. “But some feel there is still space to fight for.”
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