Another Hong Kong news organization closes amid crackdown on press freedom
Radio Free Asia
Popular Hong Kong media organization Citizen News has announced it will cease operations in the wake of a national security police raid on pro-democracy news site Stand News, which folded after two of its senior journalists were arrested for “sedition” in late December 2021.
“Citizen News will cease operations from January 4, 2022,” the site said in a post to its Facebook page. “The website will no longer be updated and will eventually close down entirely.
“It is with great sadness that we thank all of our subscribers for their support; we will carry your deep love with us, recorded in our memories,” the award-winning platform, crowdfunded in 2017, told its more than 800,000 followers.
“We have been trying our best not to violate any laws, but we can no longer see clearly the boundaries of law enforcement, and we feel that it’s no longer safe to continue our work,” Citizen News co-founder Chris Yeung, pictured, a former president of the Hong Kong Journalists’ Association (HKJA), told journalists.
“Journalists are people too, with families and friends, and we need to take the fact that this is an unsafe environment seriously,” Yeung said.
Citizen News chief editor Daisy Li, also a former HKJA president, said trying to operate within the confines of an ongoing crackdown on freedom of the press wasn’t an option.
“I can’t even figure out whether such-and-such a story or report, or even such a sentence … will break the law under the new regime we have, and I’m the editor-in-chief,” Li said.
“If I’m not confident managing our reporters to keep working … then surely I have some responsibility towards them [to stop]? Can we stick to safe news? Is that even possible?”
Yeung said Citizen News hadn’t been contacted by law enforcement but had taken a preemptive decision based on what happened to Stand News.
More than 200 police officers raided Stand News offices December 29, 2021, and arrested seven people on suspicion of “sedition” under a colonial-era law, including two senior editors. An asset freeze under the national security law prompted the outlet to cease operations immediately and lay off all staff.
Hong Kong also saw the demise of the pro-democracy Apple Daily in late June 2021 under similar circumstances.
The nationalistic Global Times newspaper, which has close ties to Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece the People’s Daily, claimed Citizen News had used its privilege to criticize Beijing and the Hong Kong authorities and had showed it was likely “unable to adapt to the new situation” in Hong Kong, where the national security law forbids such criticism.
The site’s closure comes after it was denounced by Hong Kong’s security secretary, Chris Tang, for a “misleading report” after it said he had refused to guarantee that freedom of speech would be protected, despite being promised in Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law.
Political commentator To Yiu-ming said that once national security police have targeted media outlets for “sedition,” the authorities will likely move ahead with plans to crack down on what they say is “fake news.”
“Just like the Ministry of Truth in [George Orwell’s dystopian novel] ‘1984,’ they will be the one sole source of the truth, and only they can know or judge which news is true,” To said.
“It’s similar to the old Soviet-style concept of news, in which those in power decide what is true and what isn’t, and the media are only allowed to convey the official truth.”
IMAGE CREDIT: REUTERS
