UCA News: 'Mourn the corpse of Hong Kong's press freedom', Benedict Rogers
By kowtowing to Beijing, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club has sold out Hong Kong and sold its soul
Hong Kong’s next chief executive, John Lee, who has been anointed by Beijing and will be installed unopposed, is not only a lifelong iron-fisted cop whose only experience of government is either of locking up or beating up critics.
He is also a liar. Either that or he is completely brainwashed or deluded.
Last Sunday he claimed that Hong Kong’s press freedom did not need defending because it “exists”. You could say the same about a corpse lying in a mortuary before burial or cremation.
If he wants to know the truth, I suggest Mr. Lee reads Hong Kong Watch’s new report, In the Firing Line: The Crackdown on Media Freedom in Hong Kong, launched two days ago in a packed room in the British parliament.
In an event that was standing room only, a panel that included distinguished broadcaster and journalist Stephen Vines, who lived in Hong Kong for 35 years and presented programs on Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK), former Ming Pao reporter Matthew Leung, Reporters Without Borders’ Azzura Moores and myself presented the evidence of the crackdown on press freedom in Hong Kong.
MP Catherine West, the Labour Party’s shadow minister for Asia, chaired the event, joined by Fiona Bruce, a Conservative MP who serves as the UK prime minister’s special envoy for freedom of religion or belief, and Alistair Carmichael, a Liberal Democrat MP who serves as his party’s home affairs spokesman and co-chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Hong Kong. All three are patrons of Hong Kong Watch, illustrating the total bipartisan, cross-party support for Hong Kong in the British parliament.
An FCC that squanders its privileged status as a body that can stand up for press freedom even when it becomes too dangerous for local journalists to do so is an FCC that breaks my heart
The report — released the very day after Hong Kong’s Foreign Correspondents’ Club (FCC) cancelled its Human Rights Press Awards — could not be timelier. I used to be a very active member of the FCC. Whether sitting in an armchair opposite the late, great, inspiring yet intimidating Claire Hollingworth, having dinner or a drink in the alcove beside the main bar, or propping up the bar with long-time hacks, or attending, organizing or even speaking at luncheons, I loved the FCC.
On one return visit, I was invited to speak at an FCC lunch about Myanmar (Burma) and was amused to find it was advertised as “Benedict on Burma”. I began my remarks by apologizing to the audience if they had been brought on false pretenses, expecting the then pope.
When I was denied entry to Hong Kong in October 2017, the late Paddy Ashdown, former leader of Britain’s Liberal Democrats and a founding patron of Hong Kong Watch, rang me up on the day I returned to London, demanding to meet.
We met a few days later, and he had a proposal. “It’s a disgrace that they denied you entry. But if they won’t let you in, why don’t I go instead?” he suggested.
With that, I secured an invitation from the FCC to Paddy as a speaker, we found funding for his visit, and within a few weeks off he went. On Nov. 28, 2017, he delivered this talk, and I loved the FCC for it.
I just wish that the club that I knew and loved when I lived in Hong Kong, the FCC that had the guts to give Paddy a platform, the FCC that until very recently defended press freedom, indeed the FCC whose reports and statements I quote in my new report on media freedom in Hong Kong, still existed.
An FCC that squanders its privileged status as a body that can stand up for press freedom even when it becomes too dangerous for local journalists to do so is an FCC that breaks my heart.
An FCC that, in the end, despite taking a bold stand hitherto, makes the foolish mistake of thinking that a kowtow and a compromise and a small surrender here will buy them some space is an FCC that, sadly, loses my respect.
Journalists and media workers were quite literally in the Hong Kong police’s line of fire. They were tear-gassed, pepper-sprayed and beaten at close range
The reality is that the moment the FCC caves in on one issue thinking it will ingratiate itself to Beijing and buy itself time, that is the moment the regime in Beijing is emboldened to be even more repressive and aggressive.
The FCC, an institution which I thought until this week would be one of the last bastions of press freedom in Hong Kong, has sold out Hong Kong and sold its press freedom soul. And the fact that at least three members of the FCC’s press freedom committee resigned in protest confirms that.
When I was researching and writing the new report, I chose the title In the Firing Line quite deliberately, with what the French would call a double entendre. In 2019, as I already knew and as my research interviews confirmed, journalists and media workers were quite literally in the Hong Kong police’s line of fire. They were tear-gassed, pepper-sprayed and beaten at close range.
And in 2021, so many journalists’ jobs were on the line — they were fired because their outlets were either forcibly closed or chose to shut down due to the dangers they faced. Either way, in recent years many working in the media in Hong Kong were either fired at, or fired, hence this report’s title.
While researching this report, I spoke to journalists who told me they had been tear-gassed or pepper-sprayed at close range by police in 2019 even though they were wearing high-visibility jackets with the words “Press” emblazoned on them. What was designed to protect them apparently made them targets.
A foreign photographer working for the South China Morning Post told me that once, when he and other media workers were taking a break by the side of the road and had taken off their protective masks, the police came by and sprayed tear gas into their faces. “The hatred that the police showed against the media is shocking,” he said.
The Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) — whose future lies in the balance — claims that of the 222 journalists who responded to a survey, only 28 said they had not experienced violence when covering protests. At least 141 reported experiencing direct police violence while reporting.
The case of Indonesian reporter Veby Mega Indah encapsulates the police brutality. On Sept. 29, 2019, she was reporting on the protests in Wan Chai when the police waved their weapons at reporters and she heard someone shout “journalists, journalists”. She recalled: “I saw them taking aim and I heard someone say ‘Don’t aim at us!’ and before I could react I saw the projectile coming.” Her eyeball was ruptured and she was left blinded in one eye. I wrote an article about it in the Jakarta Post.
... Mr. Chiu’s ear fell off naturally. Nobody did anything, it was not a bite, and the ear just fell to the floor
Such accounts are violent. Others are more laughably ludicrous. Former TVB news anchor Chris Wong, for example, told me that when he was reading the news on the day that pro-democracy district councilor Andrew Chiu was attacked and his ear was bitten off, he was presented with a very odd script.
Even though photographs and footage clearly showed the incident, the script that the editor provided, according to Wong, “said that Mr. Chiu’s ear fell off naturally. Nobody did anything, it was not a bite, and the ear just fell to the floor”. The editors, Wong told me, “did not want to cover violence by pro-Beijing supporters”.
Since 2019, the assault on press freedom in Hong Kong is clear. It is documented through the case studies of the closure of Apple Daily and Stand News and the transformation of RTHK from public service broadcaster to Beijing’s propaganda outfit, all detailed in our report.
New restrictions on access to public records, the weaponization of visas for foreign correspondents and the possibility of a new fake news law, as well as the police’s new definition of “journalist” and regulations on accreditation, which may well impede the rights of freelance, citizen and student journalists, all impede the vibrant media hub that was the Hong Kong I lived in and once knew.
Today, in the British parliament, there will be a debate on press freedom around the world, ahead of World Press Freedom Day on May 3. As we mark World Press Freedom Day, let us keep a close eye on Hong Kong, the city where press freedom has deteriorated most rapidly and dramatically.
And let us not only watch but also act to hold those responsible accountable, to ensure there are consequences for their actions, and to provide an emergency lifeline and support for those brave journalists who are still pushing the red lines but who may be in danger and might need to get out.
Please read our report. And help us hold to account Xi Jinping, his new thug John Lee and everyone responsible for the destruction of the vibrant press I knew, loved and worked for in Hong Kong.
This article was published on UCA News on 28 April 2022.