Hong Kong editor Chung Pui-kuen is serving a sentence of one year and nine months in prison after being convicted in August 2024 of “conspiracy to publish and reproduce seditious publications.”
Police arrested Chung on December 29, 2021, along with several colleagues from Stand News, the independent pro-democracy website where he had resigned as editor-in-chief in October 2021. The arrests put the site out of business.
Stand News operated as a nonprofit with private funding from Best Pencil (Hong Kong) Limited, a media company. Police arrested six people in a workplace raid, including Patrick Lam, the acting chief editor; Chow Tai-chi, the chief science editor and former director; Ronson Chan, a deputy assignment editor; and two former board members, activist singer Denise Ho and lawyer Margaret Ng.
Chung and Lam, who were denied bail until December 2022, were charged in relation to 17 articles and three videos, according to independent court news website The Witness. Their 56-day trial lasted from October 2022 to June 2023.
After postponing the verdict three times after the trial concluded, a court found the two editors guilty of “conspiracy to publish seditious publications” on August 29, 2024. Chung was sentenced to one year and nine months in prison on September 26, and was taken into custody on that day. Lam remained free due to a medical condition.
On October 22, Lam filed an appeal of the guilty ruling. Chung did not appeal the verdict.
Chung’s wife, Chan Pui-man, associate publisher at the now-defunct pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper, has been held since July 2021 and is awaiting sentencing in a separate case, after Hong Kong’s authorities cracked down on independent media.
In late 2024, Hong Kong’s security bureau told CPJ by email that “the ideology of Stand News was localism which excluded China, and that it even became a tool to smear and vilify the Central Authorities and the HKSAR [Hong Kong Special Administrative Region] Government during the ‘anti-extradition amendment bill incidents.’”