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Drastic political changes have created an increasingly restricted environment for journalists in the semi-autonomous Chinese city once regarded as a bastion of press freedom in Asia.
Selina Cheng, chair of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, said in a news conference that this was the largest-scale harassment of reporters in the city that they are aware of.
Cheng said her group found that people describing themselves as patriots have sent anonymous complaints to at least 15 journalists’ family members, the employers of their family members, their landlords and other related organizations since June. She said the attacks appeared to be “systematic and organized” and that she was among those targeted.
Many of the letters and emails threatened the recipients that if they continued to associate with the reporters in question or their family members, they could be endangering national security, the association said.
In addition, posts on Facebook targeting at least 36 journalists called their articles inflammatory and described legitimate reporting as problematic or illegal, the group said. Violent online threats were also made against some journalists and members of the association’s executive committee, it said.
"This type of intimidation and harassment, which includes sharing false and defamatory content, and death threats, damages press freedom in Hong Kong and we should not tolerate it,” Cheng said.
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Since the introduction of a Beijing-imposed national security law in 2020, two news outlets known for critical coverage of the government, Apple Daily and Stand News, were forced to shut down after the arrest of their senior management, including Apple Daily publisher Jimmy Lai.
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In March, Hong Kong enacted another security law that deepened fears over civil liberties and press freedom. In August, two former editors of Stand News were convicted in a sedition case widely seen as a barometer for the future of the city’s media freedoms. The ruling drew criticism from foreign governments.
Hong Kong was ranked 135 out of 180 territories in Reporters Without Borders’ latest World Press Freedom Index, down from 80 in 2021.