The former editor-in-chief of Hong Kong’s Stand News has been sentenced to jail on sedition charges for the publication of news reports and other articles that prosecutors said tried to promote “illegal ideologies”.
Chung Pui-kuen, 55, the former editor-in-chief and the former acting editor-in-chief Patrick Lam, 36, were found guilty of conspiring to publish seditious materials in late August after almost a year of delays. The parent company of the now-defunct Stand News, Best Pencil Ltd, was also convicted.
The pair have been on bail since the conviction but both spent almost a year in jail since they were arrested.
On Thursday, the district court sentenced Chung to 21 months in prison, meaning he will have to serve another 10 months. Lam was released after the judge said he had factored in his poor health and other mitigating factors, including his short time in the role overseeing the outlet. Lam’s defence team had told the court earlier that a deteriorating kidney condition meant “any mistakes or delay in treatment could endanger his life”, according to the Hong Kong Free Press.
The judge, who was more than two hours late to proceedings, ordered Lam to be released immediately.
Chung and Lam were first arrested on 29 December 2021 after police raided the outlet’s newsroom. In October 2022, they pleaded not guilty. Chung chose to testify in court and spent 36 of the trial’s 57 days in the witness box and defended Stand News and its commitment to press freedom.
“The media should not self-censor but report,” Chung said. “Freedom of speech should not be restricted on the grounds of eradicating dangerous ideas, but rather it should be used to eradicate dangerous ideas.”
However, the court had found 11 articles – mostly opinion pieces – published by Stand News to be seditious. The 11 were drawn from 17 that prosecutors had said sought to promote “illegal ideologies” and to incite hatred against the governments in Hong Kong and China and the 2020 national security law. The judge found Chung responsible for publishing 10 of the offending pieces, and Lam one.
The Stand News case has been seen as a bellwether for Hong Kong’s diminishing media freedoms, and the increasing risk for journalists continuing to operate in the city. The sentencing comes a week after revelations that dozens of journalists had been harassed in a “systemic and organised attack” that included death threats and threatening letters sent to their employers, families, and landlords.
Stand News was raided six months after authorities raided and shut down the pro-democracy tabloid Apple Daily, and arrested its founder, the media mogul and activist Jimmy Lai, as well as several executives and editors including his son. In the wake of the raids on Stand News, which also targeted the home of its news editor, Ronson Chan, the outlet removed its content from online and shut down.
The raid on Stand News prompted the independent outlet Citizen News to announce within days that it would cease operations, citing the increasingly risky media environment.
Launched in 2014, Stand News had been a significant source of news about the 2019 pro-democracy protests and the harsh crackdown by authorities, and was seen by Hongkongers as one of the city’s most credible outlets, according to surveys. Its reporters had been on the frontline of reporting protests including those that turned violent.
Its then-reporter Gwyneth Ho livestreamed her reporting from Yuen Long station as gangs attacked protesters and commuters and then the reporter herself. In 2020 Ho announced herself as a candidate for Hong Kong’s legislative elections but was later disqualified. In 2021 she was jailed for taking part in an “unofficial assembly” at a Tiananmen Square massacre vigil, and this year was convicted as one of the “Hong Kong 47” for running unofficial pre-election primaries in 2020.
A profile of Ho as an election candidate was among the 11 articles deemed seditious by the court. Others included a feature on student protests, three commentaries by the self-exiled former legislator and pro-democracy campaigner Nathan Law, and four others by veteran journalist and journalism teacher Allan Au. Au’s subjects included a piece on “new words in 2020” relating to the national security crackdown, and criticisms of the national security law and a related trial. Another article by Au accusing authorities of using the sedition law – under which the Stand News editors were convicted – as “lawfare”.
The sedition law dates back to the British colonial era and had been little used until authorities began charging pro-democracy figures with its crimes after the 2019 protests. It was repealed in March after Hong Kong introduced its own domestic national security law.
