HONG KONG—A Hong Kong Court on Thursday rejected an application to terminate a sedition trial against now-defunct online pro-democracy media outlet Stand News, a case that could see two former top editors jailed if convicted. Former editors Chung Pui-kuen, 53, and Patrick Lam, 35, and the outlet’s parent company, Best Pencil (Hong Kong) Limited, have…

HONG KONG—A Hong Kong court on Thursday adjourned to Dec. 13 the high-profile trial of tycoon and CCP critic Jimmy Lai, who faces several charges of collusion with foreign countries under a Beijing-imposed national security law. The postponement of the trial by three High Court judges comes three days after Hong Kong authorities asked the…

The trial of editors of the former Stand News began in Hong Kong on Oct. 31, 10 months after they were arrested and jailed. The three defendants were charged with conspiracy to publish and/or reproduce seditious articles from July 7, 2020 to Dec. 29, 2021. Stand News was founded in December 2014 in Hong Kong, during the…

HONG KONG—Two Hong Kong residents, including a pastor, were found guilty of sedition and sentenced to jail Thursday for clapping and criticizing a judge during a previous trial over a banned vigil in the city. The Rev. Garry Pang Moon-yuen and Chiu Mei-ying, a housewife, were arrested in April for disturbances during a court hearing…

“Giggs” Edmund Wan Yiu-sing, host of a D100 Radio programme in Hong Kong, who had pleaded guilty to one count of sedition and three of money-laundering, was handed a jail sentence of 32 months on Sept. 7. On Feb. 7, 2021, officers from the national security department arrested Wan on a charge of “seditious intent,”…

Five Hong Kong speech therapists have been sentenced to 19 months imprisonment for publishing what prosecutors said were anti-government “seditious” children’s books. The sentencing of the two men and three women is seen as another nail in the coffin of freedom of speech and freedom of the press in Hong Kong. The illustrated book series…

HONG KONG—Five Hong Kong speech therapists were sentenced on Saturday to 19 months in jail for conspiracy to publish “seditious” children’s books that prosecutors had deemed anti-government. The five were convicted on Wednesday under a colonial-era sedition law in a case denounced by rights campaigners as a “brazen act of repression.” The defendants, who had…

Commentary For years we were told that social media is privately owned so its curation cannot be called censorship; it’s just management. Then we found out that they were working hand-in-glove with government, so the problem became murkier. Now the next step is in place: the federal government has created Disinformation Governance Board operating out…

Hong Kong’s press freedom took another dive on Dec. 29, after more than 200 national security police raided the office of a local online media outlet and arrested seven people, prompting several rights groups to issue statements expressing concerns. Stand News, a nonprofit news outlet set up in 2014, became the second Hong Kong media…

Hong Kong prosecutors on Tuesday filed a “seditious publications” charge against Hong Kong pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai, adding to the charges he already faces under Beijing’s draconian national security law for his participation in a Tiananmen vigil in June 2020.  The additional sedition charge accuses Apple Daily founder Lai, 74, of conspiracy to print,…