Both current and former employees of the Stand News website were among those arrested.
The website Stand News has posted a video on
Footage shows national security police taking boxes of items out of the Stand News newsroom during a raid on Wednesday. Full story: https://t.co/Fd798Glect pic.twitter.com/pcQJGk8Pa7
— Hong Kong Free Press HKFP (@hkfp) December 29, 2021
“>Facebook by police officers at the home of one of the site’s editors.
More than 200 officers were dispatched to search the site’s offices in Kwun Tong District. In a statement, the police say that they should seize “relevant journalistic material”.
Editors, pop stars and politicians
Stand News editors Patrick Lam and Ronson Chan are among those arrested. In addition to his job at Stand News, Chan is also the leader of the Hong Kong Journalists’ Association.
Chan was not arrested, but he was taken in for questioning by police, according to BBC.
On Tuesday night, Chan had hosted an annual dinner at the Hong Kong Journalists Association.
On Facebook, the local pop star Denise Ho, who previously sat on the board of the website, writes that she has also been arrested. She is also a Canadian citizen.
Among the others arrested are lawyer and ex-politician Margaret Ng and Stand News’ former editor-in-chief Chung Pui-kuen, according to local media.
The arrested are three men and three women, and are aged 34 to 73 years, writes BBC.
Stand News editor Ronson Chan was arrested by Hong Kong police on Wednesday. Chan is also the head of the Hong Kong Association of Journalists
Photo: AP
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Tightens
The Hong Kong authorities have cracked down on the democracy movement in the region after the national security law came into force. China introduced the law last year, after in 2019 there were extensive demonstrations of democracy in Hong Kong for months.
Among other things, former media mogul and activist Jimmy Lai was also charged this week with distributing rebellious content. He is also charged with violating the National Security Act, and convicted of participating in illegal demonstrations.
Lais newspaper Apple Daily was shut down in June after the authorities intervened, first in the form of a police raid in which several leaders were arrested and then by freezing the newspaper’s funds.
A large number of opposition figures have been imprisoned or fled abroad.
– A serious escalation
The Hong Kong Committee in Norway calls the arrests one very serious escalation of abuses against the few remaining civil and political rights in Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Committee in Norway writes in a press release to NRK.
– The arrests mark a serious escalation of the attacks on the little that is left of the rights and freedoms in Hong Kong, which was guaranteed by Beijing in 1997, writes the Hong Kong Committee in Norway.
And refers to Hong Kong’s “constitution”, which was adopted when Hong Kong was transferred from Britain to China in 1997.
The law was to ensure that the promise of one country, two systems, was kept.
– The last remaining aspects of civil society, which separate Hong Kong from mainland China, are now being removed at an alarming rate, the committee continues.
It highlights the removal of the “Shame Support” monument from the University of Hong Kong and similar monuments following the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
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