#PressFreedom
Pro-democeacy news anchor stumbles in career development in Hong Kong

Young news anchor, Ingrid #TseHingYee worked for three media outlets in three years. Her disrupted career, is a sad reflection of Hong Kong's stifled media and banished press freedom.

Most recently, Tse was seen hosting a press briefing for the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institution.

She thanked her supporters after the briefing, saying that she is pondering possible developments in her career.

Tse joined #AppleDaily in 2021 after resigning from i-Cable in 2019 due to arguments about editorial decisions.

The 25-year-old journalist moved to work in online media Hong Kong #CitizenNews after Apple Daily was folded in June 2021.

In January 2022, Citizen News announced plans to close after some 200 police raided #StandNews, another independent media outlet in Hong Kong, citing concerns about the safety of its staff.

Source: inmediahk; #Feb12
https://bit.ly/3gVtGwl

No One Is Safe in Hong Kong

China’s shredding of Hong Kong’s autonomy is reaching new levels of nastiness. This week authorities forced the closure of the online publication Stand News and levied new charges against Apple Daily executives.

On Wednesday authorities arrested seven people linked to Stand News for “conspiracy to publish seditious publication,” according to the Hong Kong police. They include top editor Patrick Lam, as well as pop singing star Denise Ho and former lawmaker Margaret Ng, both former board members.

Source: WSJ #Dec29

https://t.co/9mOjcm4QiT

#AppleDaily #StandNews #China #HongKong

#Arrest #StandNews
Hong Kong journalist Allan Au arrested by national security police

#NationalSecurityLaw #FreedomOfSpeech #Sedition #Crackdown

Source: Inmediahk, HKFP; #Apr11

Read more
⬇️⬇️⬇️

#Arrest #StandNews
Hong Kong journalist Allan Au arrested by national security police

Hong Kong veteran journalist #AllanAu was arrested by national security police in the morning of April 11 for allegedly conspiring to publish seditious materials, under the colonial-era anti-sedition legislation.

Linked to the Stand News case, Au is the 8th member being arrested following 7 others in December 2021.

Hong Kong National Security raid pro-democracy newspaper, arrested 6 senior staff
https://t.me/guardiansofhongkong/31751

Hong Kong Authorities' #Crackdown on Stand News
https://t.me/guardiansofhongkong/31752

Hong Kong Police Issues Arrest warrant for Stand News founder
https://t.me/guardiansofhongkong/31766

The 54-year-old journalist was previously a columnist for outlets including Stand News and Ming Pao. Au was taken away from his home in Lai Chi Kok by the National Security police to the police station in Kwai Chung.

#NationalSecurityLaw #FreedomOfSpeech #Crackdown #Sedition

Source: Inmediahk, HKFP; #Apr11

https://bit.ly/3E1djc5

Who is John Lee?: Sole Candidate in Hong Kong's #ChiefExecutive Election

//Hong Kong’s former chief secretary #JohnLee has officially thrown his hat into the ring for next month’s leadership race after he submitted 786 nominations on Wednesday, April 15, 2022. The 64-year-old is the sole hopeful in the small-circle election scheduled for May 8, 2022. Lee is on track to be elected as the next chief executive by the 1,462 Election Committee members he vetted last year.

Lee’s appointment by 0.02 per cent of the population will mark the first time a former police officer assumes leadership of the city. Known for his hardline approach since he took the helm of the Security Bureau in September 2017, Lee’s tenure saw the 2019 protests and the subsequent enactment of the Beijing-imposed national security law.

He gained an unprecedented promotion last June to the second-highest role in the administration, where he was entrusted to chair a powerful committee to ensure election candidates were Chinese patriots.

In response to accusations that frontline police had failed to display their warrant cards, making it difficult for people to file complaints against the force, Lee said on June 19, 2010, "The design of the uniform leaves no space for displaying the police officer’s number.”

...Lee at the time called on journalists to distance themselves from “evil elements” who “damaged press freedom.”

On June 17, 2021, Lee condemned journalists from #AppleDaily and #StandNews:

"Ordinary journalists are different from them… [for] anyone who tries to use journalistic work as a shield to engage in crimes endangering national security, the SAR government must use the strictest measures to clamp down [on them]. “//

Read more:
https://hongkongfp.com/2022/04/18/who-is-john-lee-12-quotes-from-hong-kongs-unopposed-leadership-hopeful/

Source: Hong Kong Free Press #Apr18

#Regime #SmallCircleElection #ChiefExecutiveElection #NationalSecurityLaw

#HumanRights #WhiteTerror
Hong Kong’s Human Rights Press Awards cancelled, citing legal risks

Hong Kong’s Foreign Correspondents’ Club (#FCC) has cancelled this year’s Human Rights Press Awards, citing “significant areas of uncertainty” under the law.

In a statement emailed to members on Monday, club president Keith Richburg said the FCC board met on Saturday and “after a lengthy discussion, regretfully decided to suspend the Human Rights Press Awards pending further review.”
The winners of the Human Rights Press Awards were expected to be announced on May 3, which is also World Press Freedom Day.

“Over the last two years, journalists in Hong Kong have been operating under new ‘red lines’ on what is and is not permissible, but there remain significant areas of uncertainty and we do not wish unintentionally to violate the law,” Richburg wrote. “This is the context in which we decided to suspend the Awards.”

“I know this is an unusual step to take so late in the process, just weeks before we were set to announce the winners,” he added.

According to FCC's website, “The Human Rights Press Awards recognise top rights-related reporting from around Asia, with the goal of increasing respect for people’s basic rights and focusing attention on threats to those freedoms.”

Since the onset of Hong Kong’s national security law in 2020, two of the city’s newsrooms have been raided and their top editors arrested, as press freedom NGOs have sounded the alarm. #AppleDaily, #StandNews and #CitizenNews are among the outlets that have shuttered.

Full article:
https://hongkongfp.com/2022/04/25/breaking-hong-kongs-human-rights-press-awards-cancelled/

Source: Hong Kong Free Press

#PressFreedom #HumanRights #WhiteTerror

#PressFreedom
Hong Kong Drops to the 148th Ranking out of 180 in 2021 World Press Index

The Reporter Without Borders (#RSF) announced the latest World Press Index on May 3, 2022. The ranking of Hong Kong drops from the 80th to the 148th place, hitting the city's lowest record and claiming the largest drop among all 180 territories included in the survey.

RSF in their report called Hong Kong "once a bastion of press freedom" which "has seen an unprecedented setback since 2020 when Beijing adopted a National Security Law aimed at silencing independent voices."

Regarding the media landscape, RSF pointed out that "since the 1997 handover to China, most media have fallen under the control of the government or pro-China groups. In 2021, two major independent news outlets, #AppleDaily and #StandNews, were forcefully shut down while numerous smaller-scale media outlets ceased operations, citing legal risks."

RSF also detailsd how the Hong Kong SAR government "froze the assets of Apple Daily and Stand News, forcing them to cease operations and causing the unemployment of 860 of their staff."

The National Security Law is also a cause to the massive drop in Hong Kong's ranking in the World Press Index. According to RSF, the law is "a pretext to gag independent voices in the name of the fight against “terrorism”, “secession”, “subversion”, and “collusion with foreign forces”. Due to its ambiguous phrasing, the law looks like it could apply to any journalist covering Hong Kong, regardless of their location."

Source: RSF; Mingpao #May3

https://bit.ly/3FebcSL

https://rsf.org/en/country/hong-kong

#PressFreedom #Solidarity
Hongkongers Rebuild Article Archives of Apple Daily and Stand News

Since the shutdown of #AppleDaily and #StandNews last year, a group of Hong Kong netizens had been hard at work building a platform to preserve their articles, so that they may once again see the light of day.

The article archives are now viewable online: https://collection.news/

The two Hong Kong news media companies, particularly Apple Daily with its 26-year history, had produced well over 2 million articles. Over a 10-month period, the Collection.News team rebuilt the archives of 2,375,868 text articles and 3,046,000 photos, and hosted them online using their own funds.

The archive's development team describes themselves as a group of Hongkongers who wish to preserve the city's history. They declare no affiliations with any news media groups. As the threat of National Security Law continues to loom over the city, the team found it necessary to operate anonymously, and does not accept donations. They had made their software open source, so that in case their website was shut down due to unforeseen circumstances, there would still be hope that the archives could be rebuilt once again.

The website's Chinese name 果靈 ("Spirit of Fruits") draws inspiration from the writings of 20th century philosopher Tang Chun-i. The team wishes to remind #Hongkongers that "we are not flowers and fruits that had lost our roots. Our spirit can take root everywhere, and ought to sprout in every heart."

"Though Apple Daily had died, we wish for everyone to own a little Apple seedling," they wrote on their website.

Source: Luminant HK, Collection.News
https://www.facebook.com/luminanthk/posts/522014396224956

#Memory #PreservingHistory

#Restrospective
Committee Members Imprisoned: The Dilemma of #HongKongAlliance and Beginning of the #June4th Debate

[The following article was originally published by #StandNews on September 24, 2021. The news outlet was forced to close down in December that year.]

Part 1:

On 10 September 2021 at West Kowloon Magistrates' Courts Division 2, after the court clerk read out the charges, #TonyeeChow Hang-tung, who was in the defendant's column, responded with a sonorous voice: "Understood, this is a ridiculous charge." And the court filled with applause from the public gallery.

In this unsolved case, chairman and vice-chairman Li Cheuk-yan, Albert Ho Chun-yan and Tonyee Chow Hang-Tung of the Hong Kong Alliance, who have been rooted in Hong Kong for 32 years, are charged with the crime of “Inciting Subversion of State Power”. And this is the first case of the count in Hong Kong.

On May 21, 1989, the Hong Kong Alliance called on millions of Hong Kong people to take on to the streets to support pro-democracy students in Beijing, and announced the establishment of the organization on the same day. Wen Wei Po called this day “An Important Sign of the Awakening of Hong Kong People”.

After the massacre happened on June 4, all walks of life regardless of party affiliation, published condemnation and joint signatures. Since then, the Hong Kong Alliance has emphasized doing legal things under one country two systems, as in holding candlelight rallies to mourn June 4th, finding out who should be held responsible for the massacre, and guarding the truth of what happened on June 4th.

Continue reading Part 2:

Source: Stand News #2021Sept24

https://bit.ly/3vYrjRw

#Restrospective
Committee Members Imprisoned: The Dilemma of #HongKongAlliance and Beginning of the #June4th Debate

[The following article was originally published by #StandNews on September 24, 2021. The news outlet was forced to close down in December that year.]

Part 1:

Part 2:

Today, the Hong Kong Alliance faces a reversal of destiny. In addition to facing interrogation, their venue has also been seized, funds have been frozen, and social media accounts have been asked to be deleted (except for the website "8964Museum" which is independently operated by the curatorial team).

In the past 32 years, whenever the Hong Kong Alliance faced difficulties, they would refer to the contingency plan drawn up in the early years by the deceased chairman Szeto Wah, who once estimated that after the change in sovereignty in 1997, the Hong Kong Alliance would “Bear the Brunt of the Blow, become the target of repression and persecution". Therefore, as early as 1996, the organization had come up with ten contingency measures regarding situations such as deregistration and members being arrested, and listed in detail in the general declaration of the Victoria Park Candlelight Gathering, one of which is as follows:

"The Hong Kong Alliance has been characterized as a ‘Subversive Organization', what should we do? […] We firmly do not accept the characterization of a ‘Subversive Organization', and Hong Kong citizens will not accept it ... If a bad law is to be enacted after 1997 and unreasonable prosecutions are to be proposed, the Hong Kong Alliance would only be the first to bear the brunt of the prosecution, followed by other organizations and individuals, who would also be characterized as “Subversive Organizations" and “Subversives”. This will be marked as a dark age of human rights and freedoms in Hong Kong…”

"The storm that Uncle Wah predicted has finally arrived, just twenty years late." Tsang Kin-Shing, the former standing committee said.

At present, all the current standing members of the Hong Kong Alliance are imprisoned. In the future, the company registration may be removed, and the group members will vote on whether to pass the dissolution at the general meeting on September 25th. The chairman and vice-chairman Li Cheuk-yan and Albert Ho Chun-yan, who are in prison recently, issued a joint open letter pointing out that the best solution for the Hong Kong Alliance is to dissolve voluntarily; another vice-chairman, Tonyee Chow Hang-tung, later sent a letter to member groups calling for their opposition to the dissolution, "I trust their experience and judgment, but I still can't convince myself that voluntary dissolution is a "good option”, let alone a "best solution.”

Source: Stand News #2021Sept24

https://web.archive.org/web/20211229140614/https://www.thestandnews.com/politics/%E6%94%AF%E8%81%AF%E6%9C%83%E7%9A%84%E6%88%B0%E5%BD%B94-%E5%B8%B8%E5%A7%94%E5%85%A8%E9%99%B7%E5%9B%B9%E5%9C%84-%E6%94%AF%E8%81%AF%E6%9C%83%E7%9A%84%E5%AD%98%E6%95%A3%E5%85%A9%E9%9B%A3-%E4%B8%80%E5%A0%B4%E5%85%AD%E5%9B%9B%E8%BE%AF%E8%AB%96%E4%B9%8B%E5%A7%8B

One More News Outlet Closes Down in Hong Kong

#FactWire is an independent investigative news agency founded in Hong Kong in 2015, with the support of 3,300 Hong Kongers through crowd-funding.

For the past six years, FactWire has published a number of in-depth news reports, covering a wide range of topics from the safety issues at Taishan Nuclear Plant in China, the 2019 Anti Extradition protests, to the latest Chief Executive election in Hong Kong.

However, under the current political environment of Hong Kong, FactWire announced its closure on June 10, 2022. Despite the support of the public and their subscribers, the independent news agency made the decision to cease operation and dismiss all its employees.

In a statement published on their website, they wrote:

"In recent years, the media has contended with great change. Despite having wrestled many times with the difficult decision as to whether to continue our journalistic work, we had always come to the same affirmative conclusion: to stand fast to our core values and beliefs, and to always report the facts."

The news agency reiterated that "It is our honour to have been witnesses to, and scribes of Hong Kong’s history with you", and asked Hongkongers to "take care".

Read the statement:
https://www.factwire.org/en/termination-of-operation/

Source: Factwire; InMedia #June10

https://bit.ly/3ts2cF5

#FreedomOfSpeech #PressFreedom #AppleDaily #StandNews #CitizenNews

#Court
Hong Kong's Captain America 2.0: Not Ashamed, No Regret, No Cowardice in Pursuing Democracy and Justice

Translated by the Guardians of Hong Kong

MA Chun-man, aka Captain America 2.0, is convicted by the court on November 2021, guilty of “inciting others to secede” and sentenced to five years and nine months imprisonment.

CHAN Kwong-chi, the designated judge, pointed out that the defendant repeatedly incited others to secede, in the mean time disparaged the #NationalSecurityLaw (#NSL). Chan deems that this case is a “serious offence” as articulated in the law.

Ma wrote his own letter of intercession and emphasized that he does not feel ashamed and has no regrets…

Continue Reading the Fully Translated Story Here:

https://telegra.ph/Captain-America-20-Not-Ashamed-No-Regret-No-Cowardice-in-Pursuing-Democracy-and-Justice-12-30

Source: The Stand News #Nov11

#MaChunMan #CaptainAmerica
#Hongkonger #LetterOfIntercession #PoliticalPrisoner
#StandNews

#today2yearsago
Two Year-mark of #NationalSecurityLaw and 25th Anniversary of the #TransferOfSovereignty: 126 People Charged, 83 in Detention and 63 Involved in Literary Inquisition

Two years ago on July 1, 2020, the National Security Law imposed by Beijing without passing through Hong Kong's legislature was enforced in the city. Authorties in Hong Kong and China claimed that the criminalisation of speech would not happen and the law would "only affect a small number of people". They also claimed that the rights and freedom of Hong Kong people will not be affected.

As of June 29, 2022, however, at least 198 people have been arrested for "violating national security" in the past two years. Among them 126 people and 5 companies — including #AppleDaily, #StandNews and the #Alliance — were prosecuted. 83 of them have been taken into custody and more than half have been detained for more than one year. The longest period of detention is 660 days and is still counting.

Among these cases, almost the entire pro-democracy camp has been "locked up" due to the primary election. Pro-democracy and independent news outlet like Apple Daily and Stand News were shut down; meanwhile, court procedures are progressing very slowly.

This marks the 25 years since the #1997TransferOfSovereignty of Hong Kong to China.

Source: InMedia #Jun30
https://bit.ly/3HZ9Vk9

[Editor’s Note: Compared to the commonly used term “handover”, the term “Transfer of Sovereignty of Hong Kong to China” conveys aptly the complexity of multi-sided perspectives that is the “handover”, and shows as much neutrality regarding the issue at the whole. Feel free to check out BBC Chinese’s article:
https://www.bbc.com/zhongwen/trad/chinese-news-40441492 ]

#WhiteTerror #SpeechCrime #NSL #Authoritarianism #PoliceState

"7.21: The Unfinished Case": Video Report by #IndependentJournalists Reviews Records of #YuenLongAttack, Victims Speak Up as they Revisit the Scene

Read Part 1:
https://t.me/guardiansofhongkong/33081

Part 2 of 3

Interviewee: "Not a Group Fight, Only Being Assaulted"

The report strings together several scattered video segments, including live reporting by #StandNews, phone videos from citizens, security cameras from nearby shops, as well as videos by the recently-shut-down #FactWire.

The video presented several iconic moments of the night of July 21-22, 2019: men in white shirts distributing bamboo sticks from their vehicles, riot police repeatedly making way for the white shirts to leave by car, police officers patting the shoulders of the white-clad men, pro-Beijing lawmaker #JuniusHo shaking hands with the white men.

The interviewees said that there were over 200 white shirts involved that evening, but only 7 had been convicted of rioting and intentional bodily harm.

Galileo, who agreed to show his face in his interview, remarked that the nature of the 7.21 incident "was not a group fight; it was purely a case of being attacked and assaulted." He believed that there may currently be fewer than 10 people who would be willing to comment on the 7.21 incident, considering the way the government had characterized the incident as well as the law today. However, he insisted on speaking out on his own experiences and thoughts: "I stand by my principle: I say what is true."

Watch "7.21: The Unfinished Case" on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/smIWjWLYqq8

The video report also interviewed a shop owner who provided CCTV footage. "I don't want the truth to be drowned," he said. He also remarked that he seem to have been stalked because he accepted the interview, and had to check himself into a hotel in order to stay safe.

Before the camera, he shared that "the feeling of being unsafe now surrounds Hong Kong, including everyone who had spoken up, or had provided evidence, or had taken a stance contrary to the regime's."

"'The truth will eventually prevail,'" he said, almost cynically. "But when is 'eventually'? In ten years? Twenty? Thirty?" He hoped that he would live to see it. He stressed, however, that even though it seems the truth could not prevail now, the chance will be gone if he doesn't speak up.

Source: InMediaHK.net #Jul21
https://bit.ly/3omtWYB

See Also:
3 year mark of the 7.21 Yuen Long attack: when all of Hong Kong watched in horror as police abandoned civilians and sided with the violent mobsters
https://t.me/BeWaterHK/781

"Tracing the Source" - 7.21 Yuen Long Attack Investigative Report by Stand News (July 25, 2021)
https://t.me/guardiansofhongkong/30599

2.5 years after #721YuenLong Mob Attack: Who Owns the Truth Now in 2022 Hong Kong? (Jan 21, 2022)
https://t.me/guardiansofhongkong/31957

#AntiELAB #BaoChoy #721YuenLong #YuenLongAttack #NeverForget