Journalists guilty in sedition case

Duo was charged under colonial-era law increasingly used to silence dissidents

- KANIS LEUNG

Former Stand News editor-inchief Chung Pui-kuen, above, and colleague Patrick Lam, face up to two years in prison after they were found guilty of conspiracy to publish and reproduce seditious publications.

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 a city once hailed as a bastion of free press in Asia.

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

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 collusioncharges under a sweeping national security law enacted in 2020.