It must have taken many readers aback when Reuters published on Jan 11 an article that presented twisted facts and half-truths to serve a probably pre-set objective — demonizing Beijing and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government.
The article, titled “ ‘Colonial wine from new, authoritarian bottles’: Hong Kong re-tools sedition law”, lavished specious arguments to attack the recent police enforcement action against online media outlet Stand News, claiming that the authority “is intensifying a squeeze on press freedom” by invoking a sedition law adopted during British colonial rule in Hong Kong.
The authors have conveniently and deliberately sidestepped the cold hard fact that Stand News had published a series of articles inciting violence and lawbreaking and stoking hatred against the central and HKSAR governments, playing into the hands of separatists who have been striving to turn the special administrative region into an independent political entity.
One of the allegedly seditious articles published by Stand News, titled “Viewing the future of Hong Kong’s resistance from the experience of resistance in Northern Ireland”, openly suggested that Hong Kong political activists should not rule out the use of armed conflict, as their counterparts in Northern Ireland did during “the Troubles” era from 1968 to 1998, in pursuing their own political agenda for Hong Kong, which is to ultimately separate the special administrative region from China.
The National Security Law for Hong Kong … has made the demarcation between press freedom and criminal offenses clearer
The Reuters article’s emphasis on “colonial wine”, when referring to the sedition law invoked by the police in taking action against Stand News, is both ridiculous and anti-intellectual in nature. The whole common-law system Hong Kong has practiced before and after its return to China is essentially a British legacy. The said sedition law is part of this legal system; its continuous existence vindicates its applicability and value.
Reuters and its likes in the Western media circle have conveniently overlooked the fact that Washington has just invoked an espionage law from World War I to charge WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who had exposed alleged US war crimes and wrongdoings, and seek his extradition from Britain to face charges punishable by a prison term of up to 170 years.
Reuters, and some other Western media outlets like The Wall Street Journal, have given their readers the impression that they, not Hong Kong’s law enforcement authorities, are in the position to decide which Hong Kong ordinance shall apply in a particular Hong Kong criminal case. Their readers must have been taken aback by the fact that politics is so powerful that even old-school media outlets like Reuters, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times have subordinated their reputation to political objectives and agendas.
It is obvious to any adult individual who is not handicapped intellectually by ideological or political bigotry that the law enforcement action against Stand News has nothing to do with freedom of the press/speech: It targets only acts of sedition rather than the criticism of government policies, which is allowed by the law in Hong Kong and protected by the Basic Law.
Freedoms of the press, of publication and of speech are not absolute. There are constraints on them, as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights clearly stipulates: Limitations on these rights are legitimate if provided for by law and necessary for justifiable reasons such as the protection of national security.
Moreover, freedom of the press cannot cover the fact that Stand News has been propagating fake news and seditious materials under the semblance of press. Beneath its camouflaging media image is a propaganda mouthpiece that has no qualms about inciting violence, stoking hatred against the political establishment, and playing into the hands of the secessionist movement. It is in the business of producing fake news and promoting seditious materials to incite people, especially impressionable young people, to harbor hatred and commit violence against their own society and government
Regardless of the time it takes, it will all come out in the wash as the investigation and the subsequent court proceedings proceed. As with the now-defunct Apple Daily, there were some forces behind the scenes that secretly funded Stand News to advance an anti-China agenda under the guise of press freedom. Instead of exercising press freedom, its overt intention to disrupt Hong Kong governance has proved that it is essentially a political organization intended to subvert the special administrative region.
The promulgation of the National Security Law for Hong Kong on June 30, 2020, has made the demarcation between press freedom and criminal offenses clearer. And any media outlet or individual who uses journalism to defy national security and disrupt social order not only engages in criminality but also makes a mockery of the spirit of press freedom. Such ploys will never succeed or be tolerated.
The author is a Hong Kong member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and chairman of the Hong Kong New Era Development Thinktank.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.