China slowly smothers Hong Kong press freedom
By Global Journalist Staff Posted Fri, Dec 1 2000
A series of incidents have led Hong Kong journalists to fear that press freedom will disappear gradually rather than through overnight suffocation, as some had worried in the run-up to the territory’s hand-over to Chinese rule. These are the threats to press:
- Political columnist Willy Wo-Lap Lam resigned in early November after being informed by his editor that he had been stripped of his duties as China editor at the South China Morning Post.
- Shortly before Lam’s resignation, Chinese President Jiang Zemin attacked Hong Kong journalists during a press conference for asking questions that he said showed they were “naive.”
- In April 2000, Wang Fengchao, a deputy director of China’s liaison office in Hong Kong, warned the media not to report views advocating independence for Taiwan.
- Cheung Man-yee, the head of government-funded Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK), was transferred to Tokyo, prompting concern that she was moved because of her failure to become friendlier to the Chinese government.
- RTHK cut a satirical program to make way for a less critical program about Hong Kong’s leaders.
Lam is respected for his zeal in reporting behind-the-scenes politics in Beijing, according to The New York Times. Although Lam was allowed to retain his column and associate editorship, he would no longer be running the Post’s coverage of mainland China. The day after his resignation, IPI sent a letter of protest to Robert Keatley, editor in chief of the Post.
According to IPI sources, the decision to remove Lam from his post is troubling because it occurred only a few months after he was publicly castigated in a letter by the owner of the paper for writing a column about Chinese leaders offering Hong Kong tycoons favorable business treatment in return for supporting the Beijing-appointed chief executive of Hong Kong. The paper’s owner is one of those tycoons. Lam wrote his comments in a column understood to be commentary rather than news, so IPI believes he was sidelined as a result of expressing an opinion.
In addition to the IPI protest of Lam’s removal, the Hong Kong Journalists Associations (HKJA) launched a high profile campaign to respond to Wang’s suggestion that journalists not report pro-Taiwan independence views. More than 800 journalists signed a petition publicly pledging never to allow themselves to be used as propaganda tools.
Journalists fear that potential no-go areas for the media will emerge rapidly, once the Special Administrative Region government implements Article 23 of the Basic Law. According to this article, Hong Kong shall on its own enact laws to prohibit any act of treason, secession, sedition, subversion against the Central People’s Government in Beijing or theft of state secrets.
The secretary for security, Regina Ip, said Beijing would be consulted on the new laws — behind closed doors. Ip reiterated that public consultation would be held before any laws were drafted and that they would be endorsed by the legislature and therefore acceptable to the community. However, the Legislative Council, which is not even close to being democratic, almost always endorses government bills.
Perhaps because of the unwillingness of reporters to yield their indepedence, no sweeping, significant change in coverage has been noted. A few days after Lam’s resignation, 115 staff members at the Post signed a petition expressing concern over the organizational changes that led to Lam’s decision to resign. They then gave the petition to Keatley.
Even though no major change has threatened Hong Kong’s press, the small incidents and events are beginning to add up and cause concern among journalists both in and out of the country.
The Times quoted Cliff Bale of the HKJA as saying, “We’re seeing lots of disturbing signs all over the place. But it’s difficult linking all these dots together.”
— IPI Global Journalist staff with additional reporting by IPI staff in Vienna and Mak Yin-ting, the chairperson of the Hong Kong Journalists Association.