Foreign Minister Penny Wong says Australia is “deeply concerned” by the guilty verdicts handed down to two Hong Kong journalists accused of publishing seditious material in Stand News, an online news site that closed in December 2021. It had been one of the city’s last media outlets that openly criticised the government as it went about silencing dissent following widespread pro-democracy protests in 2019.
“We have consistently raised with Hong Kong and China the widespread application of national security laws and repression of civil society and journalists,” Wong said in a post on X.
The publication’s former Editor-in-Chief, Chung Pui-kuen, and its former acting Editor-in-Chief, Patrick Lam, were both arrested on Dec. 29, 2021, after police raided its newsroom. The convictions were the first to involve the media since Hong Kong returned to Beijing’s control in 1997.
The parent company of Stand News, Best Pencil Ltd, was also found guilty.
Press Freedom Disappearing
Judge Kwok Wai-kin said in his written judgement that Stand News had become a “danger to national security” and it had “even [become] a tool to smear and vilify the Central Authorities [in Beijing] and the [Hong Kong] SAR Government.”The newspaper’s editorial line supported “Hong Kong local autonomy.”
The 11 stories found to be seditious provoked citizens to commit illegal acts and incited hatred against the judiciary, the judge added.
He said a conviction was appropriate because speech that is deemed to have potential to “damage” national security and intends to undermine Beijing authorities or the Hong Kong government “must be stopped.”
Human rights groups condemned the verdict, with Reporters Without Borders calling on Hong Kong to “stop its nefarious campaign against press freedom.”
The organisation’s World Press Freedom Index has seen the former British colony drop from 18th to 135th place over the past two decades.
The United States said the case against both editors “creates a chilling effect on others in the press and media” in Hong Kong.
The increasingly aggressive stance by Beijing toward any dissent in the territory has seen several foreign-owned media and non-governmental organisations relocate their headquarters elsewhere. However, many international media outlets still operate in the city, and it remains home to many foreign journalists.
Prosecutors alleged a total of 17 stories were seditious, mostly interviews with former opposition lawmakers and activists, most of whom are currently in jail or living in self-imposed exile.
