Police in Hong Kong have arrested the top of the town’s journalists’ union on public order offenses, amid an ongoing crackdown on public dissent and peaceable political opposition underneath a draconian safety regulation imposed by Beijing.
Ronson Chan, chairman of the Hong Kong Journalists’ Affiliation (HKJA), was arrested whereas reporting on a gathering in Mong Kok regarding native folks’s livelihood on Sept. 7, the union stated in a press release on its web site.
“Two plainclothes cops on the venue stopped [Chan] and requested for his ID,” the assertion stated. “Simply as Ronson Chan was about to indicate his ID to one of many feminine cops, one other plainclothes officer stepped ahead and yelled at him to ‘cooperate.'”
“Chan requested the policeman to indicate his warrant card and requested the officer to substantiate his full title and division, as he may solely see the surname Tan,” the assertion stated. “However the officer instantly issued a warning, and, inside a couple of minutes, had Chan in handcuffs underneath arrest, en route again to Mong Kok police station.”
Chan, who was arrested on suspicion of “obstructing a police officer” and “disorderly conduct in a public place,” was finally launched on bail after greater than 11 hours within the police station, and should report again on Sept. 21.
“The HKJA deeply regrets and condemns the interception, arrest and brutal remedy of Ronson Chan by the police,” the group stated. “He was cooperating with the police, but he was nonetheless handled unreasonably and arrested.”
Chan, former deputy project editor at now-defunct pro-democracy information outlet Stand Information, was re-elected as HKJA chairman in June.
He has ceaselessly spoken out in opposition to ever-diminishing press freedom within the metropolis.
He had been planning examine journalism on a scholarship on the Reuters Institute at Oxford College, and had been scheduled to depart Hong Kong on the finish of September.
The Overseas Correspondents’ Membership of Hong Kong stated it was “involved” over Chan’s arrest and was “monitoring the state of affairs very intently.”
“Given Mr. Chan’s place as a distinguished chief in Hong Kong’s journalism group, the FCC strongly urges the authorities to train transparency and care in dealing with Mr. Chan’s case,” it stated.
“Hong Kong’s authorities has repeatedly advised the general public that Hong Kong’s proper to press freedom and free speech … just isn’t in danger. The FCC helps journalists’ proper to cowl tales with out concern of harassment or arrest,” the assertion stated.
The assertion gained a rebuke from China’s overseas ministry, which stated it constituted “interference with the rule of regulation” in Hong Kong.
“There is no absolute press freedom anyplace in the world that may be above regulation, and the id of a journalist doesn’t imply they have amnesty or get pleasure from immunity for no matter they do,” the ministry’s consultant workplace in Hong Kong stated in a press release on its web site.
“No one ought to interact in actions that harm Hong Kong’s stability underneath the title of journalism,” a spokesperson stated within the assertion, accusing the FCC of “taking each alternative to assault the Hong Kong authorities and help anti-China forces.”
“Their methods will chunk the mud,” the assertion stated.
‘Seditious sheep’ authors
On the day of Chan’s arrest, a Hong Kong court docket discovered 5 speech therapists responsible of “conspiracy to print, publish, distribute, show or reproduce seditious publications” underneath colonial-era sedition legal guidelines which have gotten a brand new lease of life because the nationwide safety regulation took impact on July 1, 2020.
The 5 members of the Hong Kong Speech Therapists’ Union had been prosecuted over a sequence of youngsters’s books depicting “seditious” sheep, which the authorities stated confirmed help for the 2019 protest motion and “incited hatred” in direction of the town’s authorities.
The 2 males and three girls aged 25-28 had been discovered responsible of “conspiring to publish seditious publications,” in reference to three kids’s image books titled “The Guardians of Sheep Village,” “The Rubbish Collectors of Sheep Village” and “The 12 Heroes of Sheep Village.”
Police stated the sheep had been meant to symbolize protesters who fought again in opposition to riot police in 2019, and depicted the authorities as wolves, “beautifying unhealthy conduct” and “poisoning” kids’s impressionable minds.
One guide characterizes the wolves as soiled and the sheep as clear, whereas one other lauds the actions of heroic sheep who use their horns to struggle again regardless of being naturally peaceable.
Maya Wang, a senior China researcher on the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), stated the court docket verdict confirmed how rapidly Hong Kong’s judicial system is rising much like that in mainland China.
“Hongkongers used to look at information of individuals in mainland China getting prosecuted in ridiculous methods for writing political fables, however that is now occurring in Hong Kong,” Wang stated.
“The Hong Kong authorities ought to reverse this precipitous decline in [people’s] freedom and revoke the convictions of the 5 kids’s guide authors.”
The case is the primary to see a conviction for “seditious publications” since 1967.
The crime of “sedition” — a common-law idea — was included into Hong Kong’s Crimes Ordinance underneath the colonial-era authorities in 1938, and was initially geared toward prohibiting publications which may arouse hatred in opposition to the monarch.
Eric Lai, Hong Kong Regulation Fellow on the Georgetown Middle for Asian Regulation, stated the conviction of the “seditious sheep” authors means that freedoms within the metropolis have now regressed to pre-war colonial instances, and ignores current suggestions from United Nations human rights specialists that the town cease utilizing “sedition” to prosecute folks.
“The Hong Kong courts have ignored these well timed and particular United Nations paperwork on the crime of sedition, which reveals that they’re completely unwilling to adjust to … the views of worldwide human rights specialists,” Lai stated.
Lai stated the prosecution of speech crimes additionally contravenes the U.N.’s Johannesburg Ideas, which state that the peaceable train of freedom of expression ought to by no means be considered as a risk to nationwide safety, and will come free from restrictions or penalties.
“This verdict may have an enormous chilling impact on the publishing trade and the artistic world, now that discussing present affairs by means of metaphors or allegory in a kids’s guide could be deemed to be inciting hatred of the federal government,” Lai stated.
Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
