Hong Kong pro-democracy news outlet Stand News and its two former chief editors were found guilty of sedition on Thursday, the first conviction of its kind since the city came under Chinese rule in 1997.
The verdict is part of a crackdown on free speech in the former British colony that has seen critics of China jailed or forced into exile, following huge pro-democracy protests in 2019.
Editors Chung Pui-kuen and Patrick Lam are the first journalists to be convicted of sedition since Britain handed Hong Kong over to China in 1997.
They were in charge of Stand News, a Chinese-language website which gained a massive following during the protests in 2019, before it was raided and shut down in December 2021.
On Thursday, district court judge Kwok Wai-kin said Chung and Lam were guilty of “conspiracy to publish and reproduce seditious publications”.
The parent company of Stand News, Best Pencil Limited, was also found guilty.
“The line (Stand News) took was to support and promote Hong Kong local autonomy,” according to a written judgement by Kwok.
“It even became a tool to smear and vilify the Central Authorities (Beijing) and the (Hong Kong) SAR Government.”
Lam was absent from court on Thursday due to illness.
The judge granted the duo bail before their sentencing on September 26.
The sedition offence has its roots in British colonial rule. It was unused for decades until 2020, when authorities started deploying it in cases against government critics.
Under the colonial-era law, Chung and Lam face a maximum penalty of two years in prison. A recent security law enacted in March upped the jail term for sedition to seven years.
Beh Lih Yi from the Committee to Protect Journalists said the use of “archaic legislation like the British colonial-era sedition law… makes a mockery of justice”.
“Journalism is not seditious,” she said.
“Today’s oppressive ruling shows Hong Kong is descending further into authoritarianism, and that not toeing the official line can land anyone in jail.”
‘All-around attack’
Outside the court, more than 100 people, including supporters and media professionals, queued up before the ruling for a spot in the public gallery.
A former veteran journalist called the Stand News trial a “landmark case on the crackdown of press freedom”.
“(Chung) merely did what a normal journalist would do, and in the past that would not lead to criminalisation and imprisonment,” the former journalist, who preferred not to be named, said.
Lau Yan-hin, Stand News’s former design chief, said the trial was an “all-around attack” on the media.
“It made you confused with what can be said and what cannot be said, creating further chilling effects and leaving you incapable to tell where are the limits,” Lau told AFP.
Hong Kong has seen its standing in global press freedom rankings plummet in recent years.
Officials from various consulates — including the United States, Britain, France, European Union, and Australia — were also in attendance during the ruling.
The United States has repeatedly condemned the prosecutions of journalists in Hong Kong, saying that the case against the Stand News editors “creates a chilling effect on others in the press and media”.
During the trial last year, prosecutors cited 17 Stand News articles as evidence, including interviews with pro-democracy activists and opinion pieces discussing the decline in freedoms.
Chung, 54, testified that the outlet was a platform for free speech and defended his decisions to publish articles critical of the government.
But prosecutors accused them of bringing “hatred or contempt” to the Chinese and Hong Kong governments.
