A Hong Kong choose sentenced former Stand Information editor-in-chief Chung Pui-kuen to 21 months in jail and his successor, Patrick Lam, to the time he had already served, as a result of Lam’s poor well being. The 2 have been discovered responsible of breaking a colonial-era sedition legislation final month in a landmark case that marked the primary time journalists had been convicted beneath the legislation for the reason that metropolis was transferred to Chinese language management. (New York Instances)
Our Take
The decision and sentencing on this case in some ways mark a coda to Hong Kong’s pro-democracy motion, which gained worldwide consideration with large protests in 2019. Activists tried to guard the town’s exceptionalism beneath the “one state, two system” coverage that was put in place after its sovereignty was returned to Beijing in 1997.
Round that point and amid a broader crackdown on civil liberties and political freedoms, mainstream media have been introduced beneath various levels of presidency management. Stand Information was one of many final impartial media shops in Hong Kong to proceed overtly criticizing the federal government. Then, in late 2021, its workplaces have been raided, Chung and Lam have been arrested and days later Stand Information ceased operations. Comparable shops, specifically Apple Every day and Citizen Information, suffered the identical destiny.
