A national security judge in Hong Kong will deliver a verdict Thursday in the drawn-out trial of two journalists accused of sedition over articles published on their news site, a ruling that will make clearer the new limits on press freedom in the city.
The former editor in chief of Stand News, Chung Pui-kuen, and his successor, Patrick Lam, are charged with conspiring to publish seditious materials on the site, a now-defunct liberal news outlet that featured pro-democracy voices.
During their trial, prosecutors characterized news articles and opinion pieces published by the two as biased against the government and a threat to national security.
The articles were similar to those Stand News had been publishing for years. But after the authorities crushed protests that rocked the city in 2019, China imposed a national security law, and tolerance for dissent in the city’s freewheeling media began to evaporate.
The two editors have maintained their innocence. Mr. Chung said in his court testimony that they were operating within journalistic principles, to deliver stories with news value and of public interest.
“We didn’t have a hidden agenda, or any other goals that you couldn’t see,” he said in his testimony during the trial last year. “When we saw very important events with a lot of public interest; we only wanted to document them.”
The case has highlighted how press freedom is shrinking in Hong Kong, casting a pall over a media environment where local news providers already try to avoid crossing government red lines on coverage, and where foreign media faces increasing scrutiny from the authorities.
Guilty verdicts “could impose an additional chilling effect on the local media industry that has been exercising self-censorship heavily since 2020,” said Eric Lai, a research fellow at Georgetown Center for Asian Law and an expert in Hong Kong law.
Hong Kong’s press freedom ranking fell to 135th out of 180 countries and territories, according to an index compiled by the advocacy group Reporters Without Borders. A representative of the organization was denied entry to Hong Kong on a fact-finding mission in April.
The trial is the latest example of a clampdown on dissent in Hong Kong that has seen scores of activists, opposition politicians and ordinary citizens who posted comments online sent to jail. The campaign has led to an exodus of local and expatriate residents and driven out some foreign companies as the city’s economy struggles to bounce back from the pandemic.
The media mogul Jimmy Lai, founder of the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, is on trial on charges of conspiracy and collusion with foreign forces under the national security law. The newspaper was forced to close in 2021 when national security police made it the first media target of their crackdown.
The trial of the Stand News editors has been plagued by legal delays since their arrest in late 2021. Originally slated to last 20 days, it stretched to more than 50. The verdict was supposed to be handed down last October, but it was pushed back three times.
The journalists were charged under a British colonial-era sedition law that carries a maximum sentence of up to two years in prison. Hong Kong introduced its own national security law this year that increased the maximum sentence for sedition to seven years — and 10, if an “external force” was involved.
