PRC Konks Hong Kong’s Stand News, Free Speech?

This week’s raiding of Hong Kong’s online Stand News & free speech suppression by the semi-autonomous/PRC controlled state isn’t surprising after its security police also shut down pro-democracy Apple Daily last summer. This time, Western media outlets say six journalists were arrested for conspiracy to publish seditious articles aka truthful yet unflattering to China; its website disappeared hours later and assets, including cash on hand, were seized. Conviction could result in fines & up to 2 years in jail.

According to the AP, “more than 200 officers were involved” in the raid carried out under a “national security law enacted last year.” In fact, the six were also arrested “under a crime ordinance [proscribing unflattering news of ‘Her Majesty’] that dates from Hong Kong’s days as a British colony before 1997, when it was returned to China. Thank you, United Kingdom?

Earlier this year, Stand News had suspended subscriptions and removed past opinion pieces and columns from its website in an effort to conform to that new national security law, while six board members resigned as well. Hong Kong’s “mini-constitution," the Basic Law, supposedly guarantees freedom of the press, yet the PRC & its Hong Kong allies clearly see “sedition” as an exception. Meanwhile, the AP noted, “Wednesday’s arrests followed the removal of sculptures & other artwork from university campuses last week,” which extolled democracy and/or memorialized the “victims of China’s crackdown on democracy protesters at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989.”

Davd Soul