The website has now been shut down, and the editors Chung Pui-kuen and Patrick Lam risk up to two years in prison.
Thursday’s sentence is the first of its kind against journalists or editors since China took over Hong Kong from Britain in 1997.
The US reacts strongly and calls the sentence a direct attack on the freedom of the media.
– The verdict against the Stand News editors for sedition is a direct attack on the freedom of the media and undermines Hong Kong’s once proud international reputation for openness, writes a spokesman for the US Foreign Ministry, Matthew Miller, on X.
Stand News was a Chinese-language website that saw a massive surge in readership during Hong Kong’s large and sometimes violent riots in 2019, before being shut down following a police raid in 2021.
– The line Stand News took was to support and promote local self-government for Hong Kong. It even became a tool to smear and demonize the central authorities in Beijing, wrote Judge Kwok Wai-hin in the judgment against the two editors.
Over 100 people lined up to witness the reading of the verdict. Among them were former employees of the online newspaper. Former chief designer of Stand News, Lau Yan-hin, called the case an attack on the press.
– It creates confusion about what can be said and what cannot be said, which makes you unable to say where the line is.
The trial lasted almost 60 days and covered 17 news articles. The court took over a year to reach a verdict.
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2024-08-29 23:25:56