What had once been routine journalism at Stand News, an independent news site that surged to 20 million page views per month during Hong Kong’s 2019 pro-democracy protests, was, by the end of 2021, deemed criminal.
Seventeen articles, published between July 2020 and December 2021, were now considered crucial criminal evidence against Stand News’s editor-in-chief, Chung Pui-kuen, 56. He had been arrested December 29, 2021, on charges of “conspiracy to publish seditious publications” after hundreds of police raided the newsroom. Six others in the newsroom were arrested, including its acting editor-in-chief, Patrick Lam.
The 17 articles that drew government ire included profiles of the 2020 legislative primary candidates and a feature interview with a lawmaker who went into exile after China imposed a national security law on Hong Kong in 2020.
Chung’s wife, Chan Pui-man, 54, an associate publisher at Apple Daily, the city’s mass-circulated newspaper with a pro-democracy editorial position, had been separately arrested for her journalism just before Chung.
Prosecutors argued the Stand News articles sought to incite hatred and contempt against the Hong Kong government and Beijing. District Court Judge Kwok Wai-kin found that Chung was participating in resistance that contributed to distrust in Beijing, the local government, the police and the judiciary, saying they were “absolutely not simply journalists,” the Hong Kong Free Press reported.
Chung was convicted of conspiring to publish and reproduce seditious publications. He was sentenced to one year and nine months in prison and released in July. Chung lives in Hong Kong, where his wife is still incarcerated. Chung declined a request for an interview.
His wife, Chan, who is in ill health after cancer, pleaded guilty in 2022 to conspiring to collude with foreign powers, in exchange for prosecutors dropping the more serious sedition charge. Three years later and still behind bars, she awaits sentencing.
The couple’s prosecutions, pro-democracy advocates and journalists say, illustrate how quickly China has suffocated Hong Kong’s independent media.
“[Hong Kong] was pretty much as free as Maryland or Washington, D.C., or New York,” said Mark Clifford, former director of Next Digital, which published Apple Daily, and now the president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation.
“Nobody would believe that the Chinese would so quickly, so thoroughly destroy what made Hong Kong one of the greatest cities in the world,” Clifford said.
The 2020 national security law gave broad definitions of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign or external forces, which have been used to target journalists. Later laws also grant Beijing power over how the law should be interpreted and allow for life sentences in some cases. Cases can be tried in mainland China and behind closed doors.
The law came in response to the massive 2019 pro-democracy protests, during which one million Hong Kong citizens marched against a new extradition bill that would permit the Hong Kong government to extradite anyone residing, visiting or passing through Hong Kong to mainland China to trial.
“The protest movement spiraled into perhaps the most extensive—and certainly the most chaotic—with violence by the police and, in some minor incidents, by protesters, and a very repressive crackdown by the authorities,” said Thomas Benson, senior research and policy advisor at Hong Kong Watch, a pro-democracy group that monitors human rights in Hong Kong.
The Embassy of China, in a written response to questions, disputed many of the accusations in this article.
“The freedom of speech and the press of its citizens is fully guaranteed by the Basic Law and the National Security Law,” Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy, told Capital News Service. “After the implementation of the national security law in Hong Kong, social order has been restored and the freedom of the press has been better protected in a safer, more stable and law-based environment.”
The statement also said that “‘Freedom of the press’ is not intended as a means to shield lawbreakers from justice or a pass for anti-China and pro-secession activities in Hong Kong. The actions taken by the Hong Kong police against the executives of Stand News and Apple Daily are completely just and reasonable measures to safeguard national security and uphold the rule of law in Hong Kong.”
China regained control of Hong Kong in 1997 under the “one country, two systems” framework, ending more than 150 years of British colonial rule. The Basic Law, Hong Kong’s governing document, guarantees freedoms of speech and assembly, an independent judiciary and certain other democratic rights not afforded in mainland China.
Media Arrests
The most high profile Hong Kong media case came six weeks after the national security law was enacted, when authorities raided the Apple Daily newsroom and arrested its founder, businessman and politician Jimmy Lai, then 72, at his home. This year, on Dec. 15, Lai was found guilty of two counts of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces, an offense punishable by up to life in prison, and one count of conspiracy to publish seditious material. He has not yet been sentenced.
“At a time of COVID and social distancing, they were manhandling him and they sent the cops in,” Clifford said. “They drove Jimmy down from his house. They perp walked him through the newsroom.”
Ten months later, police arrested Chan and other executives for “conspiring to collude with foreign forces.”
“There’s a lot of pressure that’s put on prisoners to cooperate,” Clifford said, referring to Chan’s plea.
“She’s an extraordinary person, a great leader, particularly a role model to young women and journalists,” he said.
Judges for national security-related trials are selected from a government-maintained list of pro-Beijing magistrates, according to the U.S. Congressional Executive Commission on China, which has called for sanctions on those Hong Kong judges. Sometimes cases last months; Chung’s took 56 days.
“We have seen this as a recurrent pattern with some of these sedition and national security law trials that they drag on and on and on,” Benson, from Hong Kong Watch, said. “Whether this is part of an attempt to limit outside media interest in the trials just by frustrating journalists… or whether it’s punitive on the individuals being charged – both are possible.”
Lui, the Chinese embassy spokesman, defended the actions taken by Hong Kong authorities and the judge and criticized the U.S. position.
“The U.S. side disregarded the facts, scrutinized the cases of individual news organizations in Hong Kong with a magnifying glass, and wantonly slandered the [Hong Kong] government for cracking down on press freedom and promoting the so-called ‘chilling effect,’” he said. “The independent trial of judges without any interference is an important cornerstone of the rule of law.”
Clifford disagreed. “They’re being used as hostages,” referring to Chan, who has been denied bail and is being held without sentencing. “It’s absolutely outrageous.”