Hong Kong court sentences editor to jail, releases another on health grounds

A Hong Kong court sentenced two former news editors of a shuttered news site to jail on Thursday for publishing seditious content.

The sedition case is the first to involve members of the press in Hong Kong since 1997.

Chung Pui-kuen, former editor-in-chief of Stand News, and Patrick Lam Shiu-tung, former acting editor, were sentenced under a colonial-era law that has been used in response to increasing anti-government protests that began in 2019.

Chung was sentenced to 21 months in prison while Lam, who had already served 10 months in pre-trial detention, was released based on health grounds.

In December 2021, Stand News shut down after hundreds of police officers raided its office, gathered materials and made arrests.

Eric Lai, a research fellow at Georgetown Center for Asian Law, said the conviction of the editors reflects an "anti-free-speech trend” of court rulings that have occurred since a national security law went into effect in Hong Kong in 2020, according to the Associated Press.

The Hong Kong Journalists Association has said the conviction “exemplifies the decline of the city’s press freedom.”