Hong Kong authorities have targeted journalists and media outlets with what are supposed to be “random” tax audits, in a move the industry union says adds pressure to waning press freedoms. The head of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, Selina Cheng, detailed what she said were “strange” and “unreasonable” accusations by Hong Kong’s inland revenue department. Requests or audits were made against the association, at least eight independent media outlets, and at least 20 journalists and their family members, including Cheng and her parents, she said at a press conference…
Tag: Hong Kong
Former prisoners and hostages urge Starmer to secure release of Jimmy Lai
Former prisoners and hostages wrongly held abroad have urged the UK prime minister to urgently secure the release of the pro-democracy campaigner Jimmy Lai before he dies in a Hong Kong jail. The 77-year-old media mogul, who is a British citizen, has been held in solitary confinement for 1,602 days and his family fears he might not survive another summer in Hong Kong, where temperatures can reach 40C (104F). A letter to Keir Starmer signed by 22 people who were detained abroad and their family members, says he must act…
Rights groups condemn arrest of Hong Kong activist Anna Kwok’s father and brother
Human rights groups have condemned the arrest of relatives of Anna Kwok, an exiled pro-democracy activist who is wanted by the Hong Kong police, in the first example of the city’s national security law being used to target the family members of an activist living overseas. Kwok, 28, is the executive director of the Washington-based Hong Kong Democracy Council, and is one of 19 overseas activists wanted by the national security police, who are offering bounties of HK$1m (£97,000) for information leading to arrest. Kwok’s father, 68, and her brother,…
Four pro-democracy lawmakers from ‘Hong Kong 47’ group freed after four years in jail
A group of pro-democracy lawmakers jailed in a landmark Hong Kong national security trial have been freed after spending four years in prison. Local media had reported that the group, Claudia Mo, Kwok Ka-ki, Jeremy Tam and Gary Fan, would be freed on Tuesday from three separate prisons across Hong Kong. A Reuters witness outside Stanley prison, where Kwok and Tam were held, saw several vehicles leave just before dawn. A police officer told reporters they had left. Vehicles were also seen leaving the more remote Shek Pik prison on…
Revealed: online campaign urged far right to attack China’s opponents in UK
One morning last August, a troubling message appeared in a social media group for Hongkongers in the UK. It was already a tense time to be an immigrant. Rioters, propelled by false claims online that the man who had murdered children in Southport was an asylum seeker, were descending on hotels housing refugees, trying to burn them alive. The message alerted the Hongkongers to posts on far-right channels suggesting some new targets. “They all help refugees who come to the UK to take resources,” one of them read. When Finn…
UK overtures to China worry Hongkongers | Letter
As a Hongkonger with a British national (overseas) – BNO – passport who is now living in Britain, I read your editorial about the UK’s evolving position on China with both personal and political weight (The Guardian view on UK-China relations: a dilemma made sharper by Brexit, 16 April). For many of us who left Hong Kong following the imposition of the national security law, the threat from the ruling regime was not abstract – it was immediate, personal and existential. Our migration was not simply a search for better…
‘Why would he take such a risk?’ How a famous Chinese author befriended his censor
It is 2013. For four full months, Liu Lipeng engages in dereliction of duty. Every hour the system sends him a huge volume of posts, but he hardly ever deletes a single word. After three or four thousand posts accumulate, he lightly clicks his mouse and the whole lot is released. In the jargon of censors, this is a “total pass in one click” (一键全通), after which all the posts appear on China’s version of X, Sina Weibo, to be read by millions, then reposted and discussed. He logs on…
‘The old days are no more’: Hong Kong goes quiet as security laws tighten their grip
“Ideas are bulletproof”. Three words, stamped out in multicolour tiles above a doorway, represented one of the last vestiges of Hong Kong’s once vibrant literary spaces. On 31 March, Mount Zero, a beloved independent bookstore in Hong Kong, closed its doors for the final time. Hundreds of Hongkongers came to say goodbye. The bookshop, which opened in 2018, took its slogan from the 2005 film V for Vendetta; the eponymous antihero’s Guy Fawkes mask occasionally appeared during Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests. Mount Zero’s closure, which was announced after what the…
US-funded Radio Free Asia shuts down in Hong Kong over safety concerns
US-funded Radio Free Asia (RFA) has closed its Hong Kong bureau over safety concerns for its staff in the wake of a new national security law known as Article 23. “Actions by Hong Kong authorities, including referring to RFA as a ‘foreign force’, raise serious questions about our ability to operate in safety with the enactment of Article 23,” its president, Bay Fang, said in a statement on Friday. The new law comes with stiffer punishments from several years up to life in jail for crimes including treason, sedition, state…
Radio Free Asia Leaves Hong Kong, Citing Security Law
The United States-funded news service Radio Free Asia said on Friday that it has closed its office in Hong Kong because of concerns about the city’s recently enacted national security law that targets so-called foreign interference. Hong Kong’s new national security law, which was passed with unusual speed earlier this month, raised “serious questions about our ability to operate in safety,” the broadcaster’s president and chief executive, Bay Fang, said in a statement. Radio Free Asia said that it had relocated some employees from Hong Kong to Taiwan, the United…