Pro-Democratic Stand News says they will disband the news site after police arrested seven people associated with them. – A disaster for press freedom, says the Hong Kong committee in Norway about the police action.
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Hong Kong police have conducted another round of press-related arrests.
This time it is against the latest independent news source in Hong Kong, Stand News.
Early Wednesday morning local time, the police arrested seven people who allegedly “conspired to publish rebellious content”, writes NTB.
Police say they do not rule out more arrests in connection with the operation on Wednesday, reports Reuters.
The homes of those arrested are being searched, according to police.
They have already seized funds for the news website worth around 69 million Norwegian kroner, in addition to computers, telephones, journalistic material and around half a million kroner in cash from their offices.
Stand News has posted a video on Facebook of police officers at the home of one of the site’s editors, and police said they had sent more than 200 officers to search the site’s offices in the Kwun Tong district.
In the video below you can see the police seizing boxes from Stand News:
Dissolves the news site
Hong Kong’s Prime Minister John Lee justifies the arrests by saying that journalism cannot be a tool against what he calls national security. Police claim that Stand News has published articles that fuel hatred against the authorities.
At the same time as there is more information about the arrests, Stand News itself says that they will dissolve the news website and remove all articles.
Hong Kong’s Prime Minister John Lee justifies the arrests by saying that journalism cannot be a tool against what he calls national security.
Police claim that their actions against people affiliated with Stand News do not harm the freedom of the press or individual rights in the region.
–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.
On Facebook, the local pop star Denise Ho, who previously sat on the board of the website, writes that she has also been arrested.
Among the other arrested are co-founder, lawyer and ex-politician Margaret Ng and Stand News’ former editor-in-chief Chung Pui-kuen, according to local media.
–China is tightening
The Hong Kong authorities have since last summer beaten down hard on freedom of expression and freedom of the press. It happens in the wake of China adopting a new and controversial security law for Hong Kong, after that in 2019 was extensive democracy demonstrations in the region 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 a “brutal attack on press freedom in Hong Kong”.
The arrests mark a serious escalation of attacks on what little is left of Hong Kong’s rights and freedoms, which was guaranteed by Beijing in 1997, a press release said, referring to Hong Kong’s ‘constitution’, adopted when Hong Kong was handed over. from the UK 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.
Read more about the press situation in Hong Kong here:
Major police operation in Hong Kong: Arrested by top people in newspaperChina’s attacks on free press–
