1 Overview

April 27, 2016 — Financial and political pressures from mainland China have gradually eroded Hong Kong’s historically free media over the past decade, according to Freedom House’s Freedom of the Press report. The trend has grown worse in tandem with deteriorating conditions on the mainland itself, where an already repressive environment for freedom of expression has become even more restrictive since President Xi Jinping took...

April 27, 2016 (South China Morning Post), Oped by Glenville Cross — Although the Hong Kong National Party’s calls for independence have upset many people, the party is on a hiding to nothing. Hong Kong is an integral part of China, and this will not change. Beijing will never yield an inch of territory. In the early 1980s, when Margaret Thatcher’s government examined its 1997 options, it reportedly considered the possibility of...

April 24, 2016 (South China Morning Post), Op-ed by Cliff Buddle — The unexpected emergence of a small but vocal independence movement in Hong Kong has sparked much consternation and condemnation. Some critics have gone further than merely expressing disapproval, calling for legal action to be taken against the young activists concerned. There have even been suggestions that new national security laws should be passed, in...

April 24, 2016 (South China Morning Post) — Secretary for Justice Rimsky Yuen says the government is looking into whether advocates of Hong Kong independence broke any laws by setting up a party, after a mainland newspaper called for legal action. An article in the overseas edition of People’s Daily yesterday cited “legal personnel” as saying that formation of the party constituted incitement to sedition. “The Secretary of...

December 1, 2015 (Hong Kong Free Press) — The High Court has made further rulings on the injunction in force to prevent more leaks of the discussions at a crucial University of Hong Kong (HKU) Council meeting. The court allowed the injunction to continue until the trial, and rejected the applications by Apple Daily and Undergrad editor-in-chief Marcus Lau Yee-ching to join the court proceedings as interested parties. Only the...

July 12, 2015  — Hong Kong Journalists Association releases its 2015 annual report, “Journalists Caught Between Two Fires,” documenting how journalists have become caught between two different fires: external pressures from the Hong Kong government and big business and internal pressure in the form of escalating self-censorship. “It has also been a year in which media workers faced the most serious risks as...