"I can't speak freely": fear and censorship spread to Hong Kong

Barcelona"Everyone saw what was coming," Tom Grundy, editor-in-chief and founder of ARA, explained to the ARA. Hong Kong Free Press (HKFP), the last major independent daily newspaper still holding out in the city. Grundy refers to the sentence against Jimmy Lai, media mogul and founder of the defunct Apple Dailywho was sentenced this Monday to twenty years in prison for violating the national security law imposed by Beijing in 2020.

"We've been living under this law for five years now; we've seen editors imprisoned for sedition, newsrooms raided, and more than a thousand journalists harassed on the streets," Grundy explains of the trial: "Journalists and media outlets have already received the message."

"The severity of the sentence reminds everyone that the [national security] law is a weapon against any media outlet that dares to criticize the government," says Ronson Chan, one of the most authoritative voices analyzing the regression of press freedom in the former British colony. Chan, former president of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, experienced the political offensive against the media firsthand when he headed the digital news outlet. Stand News, closed in 2021. For him, the case of Jimmy Lai transcends the figure of the tycoon: "His arrest demonstrates that Beijing will not allow Hong Kong to promote any ideas about democracy; the closure ofApple Daily It was the official announcement that journalism based on Western values ​​no longer has a place in the city."

Chan's firmness is an exception to Hong Kong's media climate. The day after the pro-democracy activist's sentencing, no journalists' association in the city considered de factoA death sentence. While governments and NGOs around the world condemn the imprisonment, the response from corporate voices in the territory has been silence. For example, the current president of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, Selina Cheng, told the ARA that she "cannot speak freely on the matter." For Chan, this silence is a sign of "manipulation by the authorities to disconnect the sentence from the issue of press freedom."

From exile, however, their hands are not so tied when it comes to expressing their opinions. "What did they incite? What did they do? Nothing, they were just newspaper editors," Shirley Leung, editor-in-chief of Pulse Hong Kong, an overseas-based media outlet that emerged in response to the loss of press freedom, told the ARA. She believes that the verdict, which she calls "outrageous," has a chilling effect on the media industry and press freedom. "It is foreseeable that press freedom will continue to decline under the draconian national security law. Even truthful reporting carries the risk of being charged and imprisoned for many years."

"The authorities in Beijing and Hong Kong have used the law as a weapon to silence journalists," denounces Beh Lih Yi, Asia regional director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. Yi laments that since the imposition of the national security law there has been an exodus of media outlets from the city, and denounces the convictions of Lai and his former colleagues as "yet another attempt by Beijing and Hong Kong to muzzle the press."

A progressive hot flash

The silence that now dominates Hong Kong began to take shape in 2020, when Beijing imposed the national security lawto stifle the pro-democracy protests that had paralyzed the city the previous year. Media outlets such asApple Daily and theStand NewsThe newspapers that had extensively covered the police crackdown came under scrutiny from Beijing.

2021 was a dark year for the press in the former British colony. In June, more than 500 agents raided the newsroom ofApple Daily and they force it to close. In December, the police enter the newsroom ofStand NewsThe most important remaining independent media outlet was raided, and seven journalists were arrested, including Ronson Chan himself. The outlet closed the same day and deleted all its web content for fear of reprisals.

"The circumstances for the media in Hong Kong had already been affected by this," says Chan, who recalls that "after the raid on theStand News "There was no critical analysis in any Hong Kong newspaper or online publication for at least a month." "The lesson for journalists is clear: if you do your job, certain ideas have serious consequences," he adds. Grundy has lived in Hong Kong for 20 years and recalls that "Hong Kong was a beacon of freedom. It ranked highly in freedom indexes according to any NGO's measures." "Self-censorship is inevitable," Chan adds. "Online media is somewhat better; you can still read reports and articles that describe the feelings of ordinary people. But in traditional media like television networks, radio, or newspapers, you can't." Working under repression

However, the founder of Hong Kong Free Press He argues that, despite the difficulties, "it's still better to be on the inside than on the outside" and that there are still many things they can do as an independent media outlet: "We can go to court and testify about what's happening, we can go to Parliament and scrutinize the official version of events, we can attend press conferences and ask incisive questions. We're in self-imposed exile abroad," he asserts.

Resistance requires a lot of balancing and some concessions. For example, he says, they are more careful with the opinion section, avoid interviewing dissidents abroad, and are cautious with topics considered sensitive, such as Tibet, Tiananmen Square, the Uyghurs, or calls for Hong Kong independence. "But local current affairs... Well, we started getting the information out there. We found a way," he maintains.