NEW YORK, Aug. 29, 2024 – The Overseas Press Club of America condemns the guilty verdicts in Hong Kong of two former editors-in-chief of Stand News, Chung Pui-kuen and Patrick Lam, on charges of sedition. A Hong Kong court has found the editors, arrested in December 2021, guilty on charges of publishing and reproducing seditious publications. The conviction is part of a crackdown on news publications in Hong Kong since an opaque National Security Law went into effect in mid-2020.
Hong Kong has fallen on the Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index to 135 from 80 since 2021 – out of 180 places on the list.
Also in Hong Kong Jimmy Lai, founder of the defunct pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, is currently on trial on charges of conspiracy and collusion with foreign forces under the Beijing-imposed National Security Law.
During the trial of the Stand News editors, the government said the articles and opinion pieces published were a threat to national security as they were biased against the government. The editors maintained that the articles were similar to those the news organization had been publishing for years and have maintained their innocence, with Chung saying in his testimony that they were operating within solid journalistic principles and within the public interest.
The OPC stands with these journalists who were trying to do their jobs and strongly condemns attempts in Hong Kong and elsewhere to harass, threaten, jail or wrongly convict reporters and editors of crimes for practicing journalism.