A Hong Kong on-line information website stated Sunday that it’ll stop operations in gentle of deteriorating press freedoms, days after police raided and arrested seven individuals for sedition at a separate pro-democracy information outlet.
Citizen Information introduced its choice in a Fb submit Sunday. It stated it might cease updating its website on Jan. 4, and it might be shuttered after that.
“All of us love this place, deeply. Regrettably, what was forward of us is not only pouring rains or blowing winds, however hurricanes and tsunamis,” it stated in an announcement.
“We’ve got by no means forgotten our unique intent. Sadly, we will now not try to show our beliefs into actuality with out concern due to the ocean change within the society over the previous two years and the deteriorating media setting.”
Citizen Information is the third information outlet to shut in latest months, following pro-democracy newspaper Apple Every day and on-line website Stand Information. Authorities have moved to silence dissent within the semi-autonomous metropolis, as soon as often called a hub for vibrant media retailers, after Beijing carried out a sweeping nationwide safety regulation following huge pro-democracy protests in 2019.
The upcoming closure of Citizen Information got here days after authorities raided Stand Information and arrested seven individuals — together with editors and former board members — for allegedly conspiring to publish seditious materials. Stand Information introduced on the identical day that it might stop to function.
Two of Stand Information’s former editors who had been arrested had been later formally charged with sedition.
In December, the opposition was shut out from elections beneath a brand new regulation that places all candidates to a loyalty check, and monuments commemorating the bloody 1989 Tiananmen Sq. crackdown in Beijing had been taken down.
The U.S. and different Western authorities have condemned diminishing press and civil freedoms that Beijing promised to uphold for 50 years following Hong Kong’s 1997 handover from Britain.
Hong Kong chief Carrie Lam final week defended the raid on Stand Information, telling reporters that “inciting different individuals … couldn’t be condoned beneath the guise of reports reporting.”