Senior journalist arrested on treason charges

Published: 04/11/2022 – 05:14Changed: 04/11/2022 – 05:12

The arrest is the latest blow to the local press in Hong Kong, whose independence has been significantly eroded since Beijing regained control of the region.

Allan Au, a 54-year-old journalist and journalism professor, was arrested early Monday morning by police in charge of national security in Hong Kong, according to several local media reports.

A senior police source confirmed to the AFP that the arrest was for “conspiracy to publish a treason”.

Mr. Au is a former columnist for the pro-democracy news site Stand News, which was subjected to a series of searches and forced to close at the end of December after seven people were arrested for “treason publication”.

Two journalists from the Stand News have already been charged with “treason.”

Jimmy Loy, a media tycoon, and six former executives of his pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily have been charged with national security offenses that forced it to close last year.

Shortly after Stand News closed, Mr Aw started writing “good morning” on Facebook every morning to make sure he was safe.

This author published a book on auditing in Hong Kong in 2017. For more than ten years, he was responsible for the current affairs program on the Hong Kong public broadcaster RTHK. After modifying its programs by officials who had hitherto wanted the non-editorial media to follow the official path, Mr. He was fired by Howe Channel last year.

Under the 1938 law, the offense is punishable by up to two years in prison for “treason”.

Initially announced by the British colonial power to suppress the supporters of Communist China, this text went unused. When Hong Kong returned to China in 1997, it had not been used for decades.

But he was recently ousted by city officials as part of a crackdown on the pro-democracy movement, in addition to a brutal new national security law imposed by Beijing in 2020.

© 2022 AFP