"I can't speak freely": Fear and censorship take hold in Hong Kong

Barcelona“Everyone saw what was coming,” Tom Grundy, editor-in-chief and founder of Hong Kong Free Press (HKFP)—the last major independent daily still holding out in the city—told the ARA. Grundy is referring to the sentencing of Jimmy Lai, the media mogul and founder of the now-defunct Apple Daily, who 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 out of work,” Grundy says, describing the trial as the culmination of a controlled demolition: “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 (HKJA), experienced the political offensive against the media firsthand when he headed the digital news outlet Stand News, which was forced to close in 2021. For him, Jimmy Lai’s case transcends the figure of the tycoon: “His arrest demonstrates that Beijing will not allow Hong Kong to promote any ideas about democracy; the closure of Apple Daily was the official announcement that journalism based on Western values no longer has a place in the city.”

Chan’s firmness is an exception in Hong Kong’s current media climate. The day after the pro-democracy activist’s sentencing, not a single journalists' association in the city had issued a statement to condemn what the 77-year-old tycoon’s family considers, de facto, a death sentence. While governments and NGOs around the world condemn the imprisonment, the response from local corporate voices has been silence. For instance, the current president of the HKJA, Selina Cheng, told the ARA that she “cannot speak freely on the matter.” For Chan, this silence is a clear sign of “manipulation by the authorities to decouple the sentence from the issue of press freedom.”

From exile, however, voices are less constrained. “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 founded in response to the crackdown), told the ARA. She believes the verdict, which she calls “outrageous,” has a chilling effect on the entire industry: “It is foreseeable that press freedom will continue to decline under this draconian law. Even truthful reporting now carries the risk of imprisonment.”

“The authorities in Beijing and Hong Kong have used the law as a weapon to silence journalists,” denounces Beh Lih Yi, Asia program coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Yi laments that since the imposition of the law, there has been an exodus of media outlets from the city, describing the convictions of Lai and his former colleagues as “yet another attempt by Beijing 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 Law to stifle the pro-democracy protests that had paralyzed the city the previous year. Media outlets such as Apple Daily and Stand News, which had extensively covered the police crackdown, immediately came under Beijing's scrutiny.

2021 was a dark year for the press in the former British colony. In June, more than 500 officers raided the newsroom of Apple Daily, forcing it to close. In December, police stormed the offices of Stand News—the most prominent independent outlet remaining at the time—and arrested seven journalists, including Ronson Chan. The outlet shut down that same day and deleted its entire web archive for fear of further reprisals.

"The media environment in Hong Kong had already been severely compromised by then," says Chan, who recalls that "after the raid on Stand News, there wasn't a single piece of critical analysis in any Hong Kong newspaper or digital outlet for at least a month." He adds: "The lesson for journalists is clear: if you do your job, certain ideas carry serious consequences."

Grundy, who has lived in the territory for 20 years, recalls that "Hong Kong used to be a beacon of press freedom in the region." Now, however, the city has plummeted in every international freedom index. "Self-censorship is inevitable," Chan adds. "Online media is slightly better; you can still find reports describing the feelings of ordinary people. But in traditional media—television, radio, or newspapers—you simply can't."

Working under repression

Despite the hurdles, the founder of Hong Kong Free Press argues that "it’s still better to be on the inside than on the outside." He maintains that there is still vital work to be done as an independent outlet: "We can go to court and bear witness to what’s happening, we can go to the Legislative Council and scrutinize the official version of events, and we can attend press conferences to ask incisive questions. None of these three things can be done from mainland China, nor could they be done from self-imposed exile abroad," he asserts.

Resistance, however, requires a delicate balancing act and certain concessions. For example, Grundy explains that they are more careful with the opinion section, avoid interviewing overseas dissidents, and tread carefully around sensitive topics such as Tibet, Tiananmen, the Uyghurs, or calls for Hong Kong independence. "But as for local current affairs... well, we manage to get the information out. We find a way," he maintains.