Union decries trend of local media outlets being “occupied” by people close to Beijing
KC.NG@SCMP.COM
UPDATED : Sunday, 03 July, 2016, 9:45pm
Journalists Association chairwoman Sham Yee-lan expresses concern over press freedom. Photo: Dickson Lee
Beijing’s tightening of ideological control has spilled across the border and threatens Hong Kong’s press freedom, according to an annual report citing the bookseller controversy as the “most blatant example” of this.
The Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) also decried the trend of local media outlets being “occupied” by people close to Beijing.
The 32-page report, titled One Country, Two Nightmares, covered major incidents in local media over the past year, including the closure of Asia Television and the University of Hong Kong seeking an injunction to bar journalists from revealing details of its governing council meetings.
HKJA chairwoman Sham Yee-lan said her group saw the Causeway Bay Books case as the most blatant attack on speech and press freedoms in the city.
“The press will be frightened off from writing or publishing stuff that may be deemed as being unacceptable to China,” Sham said.
Five Hong Kong-based booksellers dealing in publications banned from the mainland went missing one after another from last October. They later re-appeared across the border, where they were detained and made televised confessions, while claiming to be co-operating with a mainland security investigation.
Four have since returned to Hong Kong. One of them, Lam Wing-kee, went public last month to decry threats to the “one country, two systems” principle.
“This has had an undoubted adverse impact on freedom of expression and press freedom in Hong Kong,” the report said.
The report also touched on the acquisition of local media outlets by mainland businesses, citing the purchase of the South China Morning Post by mainland internet conglomerate Alibaba Group as an example.
In a letter to readers last December, Alibaba Group executive vice-chairman Joseph Tsai rejected such criticism, saying it “reflects a bias of its own, as if to say newspaper owners must espouse certain views, while those that hold opposing views are unfit”.
http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/education-community/article/1984879/mainland-china-ideological-crackdown-hits-hong
