HK arrests veteran journalist over 'seditious materials'

HONG KONG • A veteran Hong Kong journalist was arrested by national security police yesterday for allegedly conspiring to publish "seditious materials", police said.

The arrest is the latest blow to the local press in Hong Kong, which has seen its media freedom rating plummet as Beijing cracks down on dissent.

Dr Allan Au, a 54-year-old reporter and journalism lecturer, was arrested in a dawn raid, multiple local media outlets reported.

A senior police source confirmed to Agence France-Presse that Dr Au was arrested on a charge of "conspiracy to publish seditious materials". Police later confirmed the arrest of a 54-year-old male on the same charge in a statement that did not name Dr Au, which is local practice.

"Further arrests may be made," the statement warned.

Dr Au is a former columnist for Stand News, an online news platform that was shuttered last December after the authorities froze the company's assets using a national security law. Two other senior employees of Stand News have already been charged with sedition.

National security charges have also been brought against jailed pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai and six former senior executives of Apple Daily.

Once Hong Kong's most popular tabloid, Apple Daily, collapsed last year when its newsroom was raided and assets were frozen under the security law.

Soon after Stand News was shut down, Dr Au began to write "good morning" each day on his Facebook page to confirm his safety.

One of the city's most experienced local columnists, he was a Knight fellow at Stanford University in 2005 and earned a doctorate from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

In 2017 he published a book about censorship in Hong Kong titled Freedom Under 20 Shades Of Shadow.

Dr Au spent more than a decade working for RTHK, Hong Kong's government broadcaster, running a current affairs show.

But he was axed last year after the authorities declared a shake-up that began transforming the once editorially independent broadcaster into something more resembling Chinese state media.

First penned by colonial ruler Britain in 1938, sedition was long criticised as an anti-free speech law, including by many of the pro-Beijing local newspapers now praising its use.

By the time of the city's 1997 handover from Britain to China, it had not been used for decades but remained on the books. It was dusted off by police and prosecutors in the wake of massive and sometimes violent pro-democracy protests in 2019.

Over the past two years, the sedition law has been wielded against journalists, unionists, activists, a former pop star and ordinary citizens.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE