Citizen News, an independent news site in Hong Kong, has closed down because of safety fears. There were no more independent news outlets in Hong Kong after Apple Daily and Stand News closed last week. Citizen News was the only one that stayed open after that.
On Facebook, the news outlet said that the decision was made to keep everyone safe. We can’t do what we need to do without having to be worried about what people will think.
“At the centre of a storm, we found ourselves in a very dangerous situation. In the event of a disaster, we must make sure everyone on board is safe and well-taken care of “:
Citizen News was started in 2017 by a group of well-known Hong Kong journalists. It is funded entirely by donations from people who want to help. There was a statement that said its website will no longer be updated on Tuesday, and it will be taken down “after a certain amount of time.”
Following a raid on its office on Wednesday, police arrested seven people who worked for Stand News and froze about 61 million Hong Kong dollars ($7.8 million) worth of assets from the company. Stand News was forced to shut down.
The first government notice said that there was a “conspiracy to publish seditious publications,” which is based on a colonial-era law. The police who worked on the Stand News case were national security officers.
There were a lot of “seditious” articles on the outlet between July 2020 and November 2021, police said.
Denise Ho, a pop star, and Margaret Ng, a former pro-democracy lawmaker and a well-known barrister, were two of the people who were arrested. They were both former members of the news outlet’s board of directors. Former Stand News chief editor Chung Pui-kuen and acting editor Patrick Lam were also arrested by police, the Hong Kong Journalists Association said in a statement. They were charged with bribery (HKJA).
Carrie Lam, the leader of Hong Kong, said the raid had nothing to do with what they wrote.
“This was just a job for the police. People who do journalism or media work don’t have to do this at all “Lam said that Thursday.
Activists and journalists have been arrested and pro-democracy groups have broken up since 2020, when Beijing passed a wide-ranging national security law in Hong Kong. A number of independent media outlets have also closed down.
A pro-democracy newspaper in Hong Kong called Apple Daily shut down last summer after several journalists were arrested and their money was frozen under the national security law.
In addition to the charges he already faces under the national security law, media mogul Jimmy Lai was charged with “seditious publications” last week. He founded Apple Daily, which is now in prison.
When Lai was found guilty of inciting and taking part in the city’s annual candlelight vigil for Tiananmen Square in 2020, he was sentenced to 13 months in prison. Authorities had made the meeting illegal because of coronavirus rules. Lai was already in prison for other crimes.
