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Hong Kong’s once vibrant media have responded with silence or celebration to the 20-year jail sentence handed down to Jimmy Lai, a pro-democracy media tycoon and critic of the Chinese Communist party.
Lai, 78, was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Monday after being convicted of sedition and colluding with foreign forces under Hong Kong’s national security law. The charges were widely seen as being politically motivated and designed to silence one of Hong Kong’s most influential pro-democracy campaigners.
Lai is the founder of Apple Daily, a popular pro-democracy newspaper that was forced to close in 2021 amid a crackdown on dissent in the Hong Kong. After months of protests, which Lai and his newspaper supported, Beijing imposed a national security law on the city. Lai was one of the earliest, and most high profile, people to be arrested under the new legislation.
The US, the UK, the EU and the UN have condemned the heavy sentence handed down to Lai, a British citizen, and called for his release. Lai’s sentence is the harshest meted out under the national security law and is longer than the punishments given to mainland China’s most well-known dissidents.
But Hong Kong’s press associations, once the voices of media freedom in the city, reacted with silence, underscoring the narrowing space for commentary that could be seen as critical of the authorities.
Selina Cheng, the chair of the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA), said: “I’m not free to speak my mind on the Apple Daily sentencing.”
The HKJA has been attacked before by the Hong Kong government for “whitewashing” Lai, and the association and Cheng personally have also been targeted by Chinese state media.
The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Hong Kong (FCC) said it had no comment about the heavy sentence given to one of Hong Kong’s most influential media figures.
Mike Bird, a journalist for The Economist, wrote on X: “I am so glad in retrospect that I never joined the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents’ Club, an organisation that has repeatedly disgraced itself over the past half a decade in exchange for a cheap bar.”
The FCC did not respond to an immediate request for comment about that characterisation.
An analysis by Hong Kong Free Press, a local outlet, showed that the number of statements issued by the FCC in support of press freedom has declined dramatically since the imposition of the national security law.
Hong Kong’s three other press associations, the Beijing-backed Hong Kong Federation of Journalists, the Hong Kong News Executives Association and the Hong Kong Press Photographers Association also did not publish statements about Lai’s sentence.
Ronson Chan, a former chair of the HKJA, said: “It’s abnormal for these five associations [to have] no response to Jimmy Lai’s case, whether they support or regret the sentencing”. Chan said it was a “manipulation by the authority” to “disconnect the sentencing” from press freedom issues.
Hong Kong’s local media outlets, however, generally celebrated the sentence given to Lai and his co-defendants, who include six former executives from Lai’s media company.
The South China Morning Post, which is owned by the Chinese tech company Alibaba, published an editorial arguing that Lai’s case shows that the rule of law remains “robust” in Hong Kong and that the sentence reflects “the gravity of his crimes”.
HK01, a pro-Beijing outlet, also praised the sentencing and said that it “marks the end of that politically chaotic period”.
Ta Kung Pao, a state-owned newspaper, said: “The anti-China and pro-chaos forces represented by Jimmy Lai have been forever nailed to the pillar of historical shame.”
Aleksandra Bielakowska, advocacy manager for Reporters Without Borders (RSF), said: “Since the enactment of the national security law, media organisations and journalists in Hong Kong have faced unprecedented pressure from the authorities. In addition to judicial harassment, they are subjected to surveillance, threats, doxing, and online abuse, while foreign reporters are increasingly denied entry … Hong Kong no longer provides space for critical voices.”
Beh Lih Yi, Asia-Pacific director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said: “We need to be clear-eyed: it is the Chinese and Hong Kong authorities that have created a repressive climate of fear. Five years since the Beijing-imposed national security law, Hong Kong’s once vibrant free press is a ghost of its former self.”
Hong Kong has plummeted down RSF’s press freedom index in recent years, now ranking 140th out of 180 territories surveyed.
Meanwhile, China’s State Council, the highest organ of government, published a white paper on Tuesday titled: “Hong Kong: Safeguarding China’s Security Under the Framework of One Country, Two Systems.”
The policy document detailed the “unrelenting fight” for national security in Hong Kong and underscored the authority of the central government in Beijing.
The paper said that the Beijing’s rule in Hong Kong “serves China’s fundamental interests, benefits the residents of Hong Kong, and meets the interests of external investors”.
The Hong Kong government has been contacted for comment.
Additional research by Lillian Yang
