2 journalists convicted in Hong Kong sedition case

HONG KONG (AP) — A Hong Kong court convicted two former editors of a shuttered news outlet on Thursday, in a sedition case widely seen as a barometer for the future of media freedoms in the city once hailed as a bastion of free press in Asia.

Stand News former editor-in-chief Chung Pui-kuen and former acting editor-in-chief Patrick Lam were arrested in December 2021. They pleaded not guilty to the charge of conspiracy to publish and reproduce seditious publications. Their trial was Hong Kong’s first involving media since the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

FILE — Former chief editor Chung Pui-kuen, right, and former acting editor Patrick Lam, left, of the now-defunct independent media outlet Stand News leave the court on the last day of the publication’s sedition trial closing statements in Hong Kong, June 28, 2023. (AP Photo/Louise Delmotte, File)

Stand News was one of the city’s last media outlets that openly criticized the government amid a crackdown on dissent that followed massive pro-democracy protests in 2019.

It was shut down just months after the pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper, whose jailed founder Jimmy Lai is fighting collusion charges under a sweeping national security law enacted in 2020.

Chung and Lam were charged under a colonial-era sedition law that has been used increasingly to crush dissidents. They face up to two years in prison and a fine of 5,000 Hong Kong dollars (about $640) for a first offense.

Best Pencil (Hong Kong) Ltd., the outlet’s holding company, was convicted on the same charge. It had no representatives during the trial, which began in October 2022.

Judge Kwok Wai-kin said in his written judgement that Stand News’ became a tool for smearing the Beijing and Hong Kong governments during the 2019 protests.

He said a conviction is deemed proportional “when speech, in the relevant context, is deemed to have caused potential damage to national security and intends to seriously undermine the authority of the Chinese central government or the Hong Kong government, and that it must be stopped.”

The case was centered on 17 articles. Prosecutors said some promoted “illegal ideologies,” or smeared the