This is how press freedom in Hong Kong ends: not with a whimper but a bang.
The dramatic forced closure of the city’s leading Chinese-language newspaper, Apple Daily — 500 police flooding its newsroom, its founder in jail, seven of its writers and executives arrested — lights up the all-too-global trend of a confident authoritarianism relying on nostrums of national security to screw down an independent media.
And in Hong Kong of all places, a proud media centre with a century-long tradition of a free media, a city that’s come to stand for the enduring popularity of democracy.
It’s not just Apple Daily. Public broadcaster RTHK and major English language voice the South China Morning Post are also under pressure. Traditional public demonstrations of democratic support and solidarity, like the annual June 4 Tiananmen Square commemoration, have been banned.
Today, July 1, marks the 24th anniversary of the handover of the former British colony to China with the promise of the light-handed one-country-two-systems. Usually it’s marked with public rallies for democracy. This year, like last, it’s banned (ostensibly due to COVID-19).
Last year 370 people were arrested in the day’s protest which followed a new national security law imposed from Beijing, fracturing the territory’s autonomy.
That law made Apple Daily a rolling target of the crackdown. In August 2020 its founder Jimmy Lai, was arrested for his role in “unauthorised” demonstrations about 18 months earlier over a proposed extradition law allowing people arrested in Hong Kong to be interrogated, tried and jailed in mainland China. (A similar proposal was defeated by public protests in 2003.)
Lai, 67, was jailed in December and in May was sentenced to 14 months’ jail. He faces further charges under the national security law.
Two weeks ago, on June 17, about 500 police raided the paper’s newsroom. Its funds and other assets were frozen. Seven staff have been arrested, including just this week when 57-year-old senior journalist Fung Wai-kong was detained at the airport and charged with “conspiring to collude with foreign countries or foreign forces to endanger national security”.
Last Thursday the paper published its final edition.
The public broadcaster RTHK — its independence supposedly guaranteed by editorial charter — has seen management and editorial changes to render it more compliant with intervention in news programs and staffing. Its political satire Headliner launched in 1989, was “suspended” in June last year.
The English-language South China Morning Post has become more cautious since its co-owner, Alibaba’s Jack Ma, was mysteriously detained in China last year. Ma took over the masthead in 2015. He’s been largely hands-off, allowing the paper to grow as a respected voice for news on China.
He is reportedly now under orders from Beijing to sell, presumably to a state-owned enterprise or some more compliant billionaire.
The annual press freedom reports of the Hong Kong Journalists Association have demonstrated increased self-censorship and governmental secrecy for over a decade. Most of Hong Kong’s independent media are blocked by China’s Great Firewall and some local journalists have been denied access to the mainland. Hong Kong journalist Ching Cheong (then working for Singapore’s The Strait Times), was jailed in China in 2005, released only in the lead-up to the 2008 Olympics.
It’s not just the news media. In 2015 its strong book publishing tradition was chilled when five book-sellers associated with the city’s Causeway Books were detained in China, including one seized in the city. (Apple Daily was one of the few Chinese language media to consistently cover the case.)
Australia’s media connections with Hong Kong run deep — a common first (and lingering) stop for Australian journalists and many Hong Kong journalists now live in Australia.
The South China Morning Post was co-founded by Sydney-born Tse Tsan-tai in 1903; the Hong Kong Journalists Association by Jack Spackman in 1968; Richard Hughes (fictionalised both by Ian Fleming and John Le Carre) sent the Cold War-watching China from the city; the Murdochs passed through, owning, first, the South China Morning Post and then the Star Asia satellite broadcaster (where son James made his managerial chops).
Once a vibrant media city with unique character, Hong Kong now is more recognised as a model of a national security-driven authoritarianism, with Chinese characteristics.
‘…a mere 24 years…’ ?!
I’m astonished it has taken so long to kill off the free press. The mystery is why it wasn’t done earlier.
I recall viewing the handover ceremony in 1997 on ABC TV as Lord Patten went through the formalities, everyone involved being civilised & cordial. All I could see was a fly being caught in the spider’s web… doomed.
There’s NOTHING about the UK that’s civilised – they & their BBC are masters of propaganda.
Hong Kong, far more than a pimple on China’s bum. More so betrayal of decaying western values and economic excess. An embryonic example of a future world cycle. Re-establishing authoritarianism, dominance and leadership. A justification of and for world climate threat and ever present political power, avarice? Who, in western democracies have emerged to replace the Merkels? Or Biden, or Morrison et al? The latter, I’m joking!
What amazes me is that dodgy data is used against the Chinese to satisfy our cowering white prejudices but the one news story that should be trumpeted by all media within Australia is the news that Julian Assange, an Australian last time I checked, has had his defence overwhelmingly strengthened by the admission of the prime US ‘witness’ to his case admit he, the witness, was lying. It appears that this witness, an Icelander, has had quite the chequered criminal history ranging from fraud to pedophilia. He has been described by the Icelandic judicial system as a psychopath. He was being groomed by a special squad of FBI and Justice Department within Iceland who, upon learning of this, deported this team ASAP back to the US.
Do we hear from Christopher about this? I’ll apolgise if he does report on this in the next few days but I’m not holding my breath. In fact, a search based on Assange and this witness turns up 4/5ths of 5/8ths of SFA in regard to ‘our’ Western media. Talk about censorship! And this news came out 2 days ago. There are many ways to censor. We favour ignoring the event if it doesn’t fit our narrative. Some like the big stick as Julian is discovering. Either way, it’s not the way to inform a ‘democracy’.
Finally, it begs the question of just what is an Australian? Is it a person who was born here and pursues the search for truth between countries but who, in this pursuit, is presented with evidence of serious war crimes committed by our allies and is then fed to those allied wolves without mercy by our government? Where Julian goes along with Witness K and the many stranded overseas by this pandemic, so go we as this government narrows the definition of freedom, democracy and fair play.
Great post & spot on – see link below your post
Julian Assange is a political prisoner. Australia is a failed democracy. We are no more than a vassal state of theUnited States of America.
I think these people have been charged under HK law? It will be interesting to see the fall-out from the charges relating to foreign collusion. I keep hearing about how demonstrators were paid from abroad, but doubt it could be on a large scale.
From my small group of contacts; it seems a small minority are panicked. Most are not.
I do think that the demonstrators are reaping what they sowed. In the end they were essentially demanding independence. This could never have been countenanced.
It is generally a safe bet that intelligence agencies, from any country, aren’t competent enough to astroturf an entire movement, even where there is actual foreign interference. You don’t get the sort of crowds that showed up for the HK protests to put on pants and march without a sincere grievance.
The initial protest against the proposed extradition legislation was a success because the legislation was removed in deference to the protestors wishes. The protestors won a significant victory. However that was not enough to those who wanted to use the protests as a vehicle to forming subversion and revolution.Then out of thin air were added the non negotiable ridiculous “5 Demands”and the protests turned into riots. There was significant co-ordination between the rioters and Apple Daily.
In 2020 the Taiwan Government refused to the renew the TV licence for CTi TV channel. Apparently sympathetic to the opposition Kuomintang Party which advocates for better relations with China. Only got a cursory mention in western media and then forgotten. Where is the outrage?
SCMP in Hong Kong is frequently critical of China but has balanced reporting unlike Apple Daily which advocated sedition, riots and foreign interference hence it is not in trouble with the security laws. Apple Daily also paid for a fake dossier to be published to smear Joe Biden and his son alleging he was in cahoots with Beijing in 2020 so as to favour Trump. Apple Daily was a subversive publication and good riddance.
This is the problem. The Western Press rants about a “brutal crackdown” against Seditionists, seccionists and the Leaders of the Riots that called for US intervention against the lawful HK Government. As you stated, Apple Daily was a subversive publication (a complete rag actually) and Jimmy Lai is right in the thick of it. HK has only arrested those that actively organized illegal “protests” (Riots by the time the Black Clad Protestors got involved) and called for foreign intervention to overthrow the Government. Can you imagine the uproar here in Australia if any major publication supported such activities here in Australia?
The Media have a lot to answer for. During the HK Riots they dutifully used the numbers of Rioters that attended the “protests” (since proven by various HK Universities to be, at best, 30% of the numbers stated by the media), ignored the destruction, assaults and, in some cases, murders of innocent citizens going about their lawful business (while claiming police brutality at every step). I would again recommend that anyone wanting to know what the real situation was in HK during this period read Nury Vittachi’S excellent book “The Other Side Of The Story – A Secret War in HK). It certainly matches my experiences and those of friends.
As you stated, the SCMP is quite critical of the HK yet is not receiving the attention of the HK Police.
As I raised once before, has anyone noticed how the media describe everything in a biased manner (with lots of hyperbole) these days just to hype everything up? When was the last time that any Journalist actually complied with their Professional Standards?
https://accountablejournalism.org/ethics-codes/Australia-Journalists-Code