Two Hong Kong journalists will learn the outcome this week of their landmark sedition trial, whose verdict could set the tone for the future of journalism in the Chinese city.
The two journalists, Chung Pui-kuen and Patrick Lam, are former editors of the now-closed independent news outlet, Stand News. They face up to two years in prison if found guilty under Hong Kong’s colonial-era sedition laws.
The pair were arrested by Hong Kong’s national security police in December 2021 along with five other Stand News staff and board members, including Denise Ho, a pop singer turned prominent pro-democracy activist, and Margaret Ng, a widely respected former politician and barrister.
Sedition laws were introduced in Hong Kong when it was a British colony but had lain dormant until 2020 when Beijing imposed new national security laws in response to months of antigovernment protests a year earlier.
Along with new crimes like “collusion with foreign forces” or “subversion,” prosecutors began charging Hong Kong people with the crime of “sedition” for the first time in more than 50 years.
While not the first sedition trial since the security law triggered a political sea change, Chung and Lam’s trial will be closely watched as it is the first to deal directly with journalism and media, according to a Hong Kong-based observer who has followed the case.
The observer told Al Jazeera that the judges in their ruling will have to define what is considered “legitimate reporting” and what is considered “inciting hatred” against the government.
“The expectation is that it’s the first sedition trial related to journalism, so we can expect that the judge would need to draw a line between what is acceptable and not acceptable journalism, especially if they indeed find the defendants guilty,” the person said, asking to not be identified for fear of professional repercussions.
Prosecutors accuse Chung and Lam of conspiring to publish 17 seditious articles and op-eds that were critical of the government, and that made Stand News a “political platform” rather than an independent media outlet. The articles included news reports about Hong Kong’s pro-democracy camp and commentary from political figures living in exile.
During the trial, defence counsel Audrey Eu argued that not only did Chung and Lam not write the articles in question, the prosecution had failed to prove how they posed “any real risk to national security” or served as a political platform.
She said the news outlet’s work was in the public interest, and its duty as the “Fourth Estate” was to scrutinise the Hong Kong government with the hope it would improve governance.
Eu also criticised the prosecution’s irregular conduct during the trial, which included relying on nearly 600 new pieces of evidence during their cross-examinations and closing arguments that they did not submit before the trial began.
Eric Lai, a research fellow with the Georgetown Center for Asian Law, notes sedition charges have had a 100 percent conviction rate since they were revived, He expects Chung and Lam, who have spent nearly a year in custody before they were granted bail at the start of trial proceedings, will also be found guilty.
“I don’t expect a rights-respecting outcome given the illiberal trend of Hong Kong courts’ rulings since 2020. They do not appreciate and even balance the protection of fundamental human rights like free speech and free expression with an overbroad national security agenda of the government,” Lai told Al Jazeera.
‘Silencing independent voices’
Stand News shut down shortly after the police raided its offices in December 2021. The outlet also deleted its archive online.
While a relatively small outlet, its swift demise reverberated beyond Hong Kong as the latest indication of how the city, once regarded as the freest in Asia, was changing.
At the time it closed, Stand News was one of the few pro-democracy news outlets still in operation. The popular Apple Daily tabloid had folded six months earlier after hundreds of national security police raided its newsroom and arrested senior executives and founder Jimmy Lai.
The Stand News crackdown was criticised by rights groups and some Western government officials, including US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who described the outlet as “one of the few remaining bastions of free and independent media” in Hong Kong.
“By silencing independent media, [Chinese] and local authorities undermine Hong Kong’s credibility and viability. A confident government that is unafraid of the truth embraces a free press,” Blinken said at the time.
In response, then-leader Carrie Lam denied the media was being targeted and said releasing those arrested would be against the rule of law.
Shortly after the raid on Stand News, the independent news outlet Citizen News also voluntarily shut down, citing concerns about Hong Kong’s “deteriorating media environment”. They were followed by four other independent news outlets, according to the media watchdog Reporters Without Borders, which monitors Hong Kong’s media landscape.
The city’s press freedom ranking fell from 73 out of 180 territories and countries in RSF’s 2019 annual World Press Freedom Index to 135 last year, just above South Sudan.
“Once a bastion of press freedom, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China has suffered an unprecedented series of setbacks since 2020, when Beijing adopted a national security law aimed at silencing independent voices,” the media watchdog said.
The fall is even greater when measured against 2002, five years after Hong Kong’s handover to China and the first year the index was compiled by RSF. At that time, Hong Kong ranked number 18.
Foreign media have also started moving positions previously based in Hong Kong to places including South Korea and Taiwan.
The local and international outlets that remain have sometimes found themselves in hot water.
In 2022, the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents’ Club scrapped its Human Rights Press Awards over fears they might “unintentionally” violate local laws amid plans to recognise Stand News with several prizes.
The awards have since moved to Taiwan, along with many journalists covering East Asia.
Last month, The Wall Street Journal fired Hong Kong reporter Selina Cheng shortly after she was elected president of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, after reportedly asking Cheng to step down from the post or lose her position.
Cheng said the US newspaper told her its employees “should not be seen as advocating for press freedom in a place like Hong Kong”.
The association earlier drew the ire of Hong Kong security chief Chris Tang for “siding” with protesters in 2019. He also accused the organisation of accepting funding from the US government.
The Journal previously told Al Jazeera that Cheng’s position was made redundant when the paper moved its Asian headquarters from Hong Kong to Singapore.
Meanwhile, the Hong Kong government has further tightened the sedition laws, which they say are necessary to ensure the media does not “endanger” national security.
In April, it passed a local version of the national security law, known as Article 23.
The new law adds several new offences, including treason, sabotage, and espionage, and allows police to hold suspects for up to 16 days without charge. Sedition has also been added, and its scope expanded to include “inciting hatred” against the Chinese Communist Party.
Maximum penalties have been raised from a maximum of two years’ imprisonment to seven years, or 10 years for cases involving “external forces” like foreign governments, according to Amnesty International.
Hong Kong leader John Lee said Article 23, which a previous administration had to shelve after mass protests, would help to further safeguard the city from problems like political unrest, sabotage and foreign infiltration.
The government claimed the provisions were similar to laws passed by Australia, the United Kingdom and Singapore to tackle covert and overt foreign influence over their political systems.
Regina Ip, a member of the city’s pro-Beijing legislative council, wrote in an April op-ed in the local South China Morning Post that Hong Kong had a “constitutional, legal and moral duty to safeguard national security” and had failed to do so since abandoning the legislation nearly 27 years before.
“Offences like treason, sedition, espionage and theft of state secrets have been on our statute books for decades,” she wrote. “But many provisions are ineffective and outdated. For both constitutional and practical reasons, Hong Kong needs to update existing laws.”