Ronson Chan, ex-chairman of the Hong Kong Journalists Affiliation, speaks to reporters exterior the Excessive Court docket in Admiralty in Hong Kong earlier than a ruling on his attraction in opposition to his conviction for obstructing a police officer, on Could 29, 2026.
| Picture Credit score: AP
A outstanding Hong Kong journalist started serving a five-day jail sentence on Friday (Could 29, 2026) after shedding an attraction in opposition to his conviction for obstructing a police officer in a case that sparked issues concerning the metropolis’s declining press freedom.
Hong Kong was as soon as a bastion of media freedom in Asia, however information retailers have been pressured to shut, a number of journalists have been arrested and people nonetheless working are working in a narrower area since authorities started cracking down on activist voices following the mass pro-democracy protests in 2019.
Ronson Chan, a former chairman of the Hong Kong Journalists Affiliation, was arrested in September 2022 on his technique to a reporting project. He was accused of refusing to point out the plainclothes officer his identification card upon request.
A decrease court docket sentenced Chan to 5 days in jail in 2023, ruling that he had didn’t take out his identification card in a well timed method and stored asking the officer questions “recklessly.” He appealed the choice and was granted bail.
Deputy Excessive Court docket Choose Lily Wong upheld Chan’s conviction and sentence Friday and ordered him to be despatched to jail.
Forward of the listening to, Chan, who wore a black T-shirt printed with the phrases “Free Press,” informed reporters that he felt uneasy and sophisticated.
He mentioned he stayed in Hong Kong to proceed to pursue his journalism profession as a result of press freedom was promised by the town’s mini-constitution, the Fundamental Regulation.
“If I find yourself shedding at this time, I really feel it might be fairly an enormous irony for me personally,” he mentioned.
Within the crackdown following the 2019 protests, two vocal Hong Kong media retailers — Apple Day by day and Stand Information — have been pressured to close down in 2021.
Two former prime editors at Stand Information have been convicted of conspiracy to publish and reproduce seditious publications in 2024. Considered one of them was sentenced to 21 months in jail.
In February, Apple Day by day founder Jimmy Lai was sentenced to twenty years in jail after being discovered responsible of conspiracy to collude with international forces and conspiring with others to publish seditious articles.
Six different newspaper staffers, who have been additionally convicted below a nationwide safety regulation like Lai, obtained jail phrases starting from six years and 9 months, to 10 years.
In different newsrooms, journalists are going through extra crimson traces and rising self-censorship. The erosion of press freedom parallels a broader curtailment of Western-style civil liberties within the former British colony, which returned to China’s rule in 1997.
The Hong Kong authorities insists the safety regulation is critical for the town’s stability.
The town ranked one hundred and fortieth out of 180 international locations and territories in Reporters With out Borders’ newest World Press Freedom Index.
Revealed – Could 29, 2026 02:38 pm IST