Hong Kong Singer Denise Ho Granted Bail in Stand News Case
Hong Kong Singer Denise Ho Granted Bail in Stand News Case
(Bloomberg) -- Hong Kong activist and singer Denise Ho was granted bail after being swept up in a raid on now-shuttered media outlet Stand News that escalated fears over eroding press freedoms in the former British colony.
“Thank you friends for all your kind messages, I have been released on bail and have returned home safely,” the pop star wrote on her verified Twitter account late Thursday evening. Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly had earlier expressed concern for Ho, a Canadian citizen.
Ho was among four former Stand News board members released Thursday after their arrest by national security police on colonial-era sedition charges Wednesday, media including the South China Morning Post reported. More than 200 police officers raided the outlet’s newsroom and seized HK$61 million ($7.8 million) of assets. Hours later, the publication announced it was folding and would delete its website.
The collapse of Stand News was the latest blow to civil society in Hong Kong after Beijing imposed a national security law on the city in June 2020. Since then, some of the city’s largest labor unions have disbanded, international non-governmental organizations such as Amnesty International have left town and its largest pro-democracy newspaper, Apple Daily, closed under police pressure. More than 160 people have now been arrested by the local national security department.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday urged Chinese authorities to stop arresting members of the media, adding that “journalism is not sedition.” The Chinese Foreign Ministry’s Hong Kong branch said in a statement that supporting freedom of the press was an excuse “to disrupt the stable and sound-governed Hong Kong.”
Although Ho and the other three former Stand News board members were released, former top editors Chung Pui-kuen and Patrick Lam remain in custody after being charged Thursday, the Post reported.
Bail has become a contentious issue under the anti-sedition law, which was little used since its initial enactment in 1938 until the Hong Kong government recently revived it. The Court of Final Appeal ruled earlier this month that the higher threshold for bail set by the national security law can apply to other cases, such as sedition, when charges were brought by security police.
That has deepened concerns the Beijing-drafted security law will be used to limit the rights of a wider group of defendants than just those accused of violating the four crime outlined in the measure. Scores of those charged under the national security law have been held in pre-trial detention for almost a year.
“This is a significant departure from prior practice in Hong Kong, where bail was the norm for non-violent offenses,” Thomas Kellogg, executive director at Georgetown University’s Center for Asian Law, wrote in a commentary in the Hong Kong Free Press.
©2021 Bloomberg L.P.