Hong Kong Residents Dissatisfied With Level of Press Freedom
The Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute (HKPORI) recently published the results of a phone survey of 1004 citizens of the special administrative region’s satisfaction with news media. Hong Kong is ranked 80th in Reporters without Borders’ (RSF) Global Press Freedom Index, far from the bottom, yet only 28 percent of those surveyed were satisfied with the level of press freedom in Hong Kong, the lowest number on record since 1997.
Hong Kong’s spot on the Press Freedom Index has been on a steady decline since 2013. However, trouble began in a new way in April of 2020 when the government of the special province introduced a law that was designed to eradicate the pro-democracy movement. When the law passed in May 2020, it included a life sentence for four crimes that were loosely defined as “crimes against the state.” More than 98 percent of working journalists in Hong Kong expressed fears that the law would be used against them.
In August of 2020, two hundred police officers raided the offices of Apple Daily, an opposition newspaper and China’s largest. Jimmy Lai, founder of the paper, was detained for 40 hours. Lai would go on to be detained again in December of 2020 for “fraud” and later be charged with “collusion with foreign forces,” for which he was remanded into the custody of the state. Lai was detained through April 2021, and then put back in prison for an additional 14 months for “organizing illegal protests.”
The clear tension between the peoples of the province of Hong Kong and the Chinese government is being taken out on journalists like Lai. More and more independent news outlets, such as Stand News, Citizen News, Mad Dog Daily, and Local Press, have closed in the past few months, citing the need to “protect their staff.” To date, 12 journalists and press freedom defenders in Hong Kong are detained and still awaiting trial. All the while, China has promised it will craft more national security laws for Hong Kong that contain harsher punishments for treason, secession, sedition, and subversion: all crimes which pro-democracy journalists in Hong Kong are being detained for at present.
The closure of these media outlets and the unsubtle raids on media offices have left citizens of Hong Kong wary of its press. Chris Yeung, former chair of the Hong Kong Journalists Association and founder of Citizen News, also pointed to a lack of diversity within media as a reason why people no longer trust it. The International Federation for Journalists said that press freedom in Hong Kong has “entered its endgame.” It noted, in a report on the state of Hong Kong, that “a clear and documented exodus and closure of both local and international media outlets, journalists and media workers that once earned Hong Kong a reputation as a bastion for media excellence in the Asia region” offers proof of the country’s deterioration.
Lai, however, continues to write. “There is always a price to pay when you put truth, justice and goodness ahead of your own comfort, safety and physical wellbeing, or your life becomes a lie,” he said. “I choose truth instead of a lie and pay the price.”
