Dozens of Hong Kong journalists and some of their families have been harassed, media group says

HONG KONG (AP) — Dozens of Hong Kong journalists and some of their family members and associates have been harassed in recent months, a leading media professional group said Friday.

Drastic political changes have created an increasingly restricted environment for journalists in the semi-autonomous Chinese city once regarded as a bastion of press freedom in Asia.

Selina Cheng, chair of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, said in a news conference that this was the largest-scale harassment of reporters in the city that they are aware of.

Cheng said her group found that people describing themselves as patriots have sent anonymous complaints to at least 15 journalists’ family members, the employers of their family members, their landlords and other related organizations since June. She said the attacks appeared to be “systematic and organized” and that she was among those targeted.

Many of the letters and emails threatened the recipients that if they continued to associate with the reporters in question or their family members, they could be endangering national security, the association said.

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In addition, posts on Facebook targeting at least 36 journalists called their articles inflammatory and described legitimate reporting as problematic or illegal, the group said. Violent online threats were also made against some journalists and members of the association’s executive committee, it said.

“This type of intimidation and harassment, which includes sharing false and defamatory content, and death threats, damages press freedom in Hong Kong and we should not tolerate it,” Cheng said.

She said they did not find any evidence that the harassment was directly linked to the city’s authorities. Several people who were targeted have reported their cases to the police or the privacy commissioner’s office, she said. But the journalists organization was concerned about potential data leaks from the government because some information used cannot be easily obtained under normal circumstances.

Hong Kong’s undersecretary for security, Michael Cheuk, rejected the group’s suggestion that data could be leaked from the government but told reporters everyone in the city should be free from threats, fear and harassment. He called on affected people to report their cases to the authorities.

Police said they would handle each report according to the law. They said Hong Kong society is underpinned by the rule of law and if residents suspect they are being intimidated or harassed, they should report the case to them.

The privacy commissioner’s office said it received one complaint on Friday and is handling it according to established procedures.

This wave of harassment affected 13 local and international news outlets and two journalism education institutions, the association said.

One of them, the online English news site Hong Kong Free Press, said the landlord of its director Tom Grundy and property agencies received anonymous letters containing threats of “unimaginable consequences” and “collateral damage” unless he was evicted from the property and district. Grundy reported the incident to police Saturday, though the agencies and landlord ignored the threats.

Since the introduction of a Beijing-imposed national security law in 2020, two news outlets known for critical coverage of the government, Apple Daily and Stand News, were forced to shut down after the arrest of their senior management, including Apple Daily publisher Jimmy Lai.

The Hong Kong government insists that there are no restrictions on press freedom if journalists’ reports are based on facts.

In March, Hong Kong enacted another security law that deepened fears over civil liberties and press freedom. In August, two former editors of Stand News were convicted in a sedition case widely seen as a barometer for the future of the city’s media freedoms. The ruling drew criticism from foreign governments.

Hong Kong was ranked 135 out of 180 territories in Reporters Without Borders’ latest World Press Freedom Index, down from 80 in 2021.