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HONG KONG — A consultant of Reporters With out Borders was deported from Hong Kong upon arrival Wednesday, the advocacy group mentioned, in what it known as a “new decline” in press freedom within the Chinese language territory.
Aleksandra Bielakowska, an advocacy officer for Reporters With out Borders who is predicated in Taiwan, was detained for six hours at Hong Kong Worldwide Airport, the Paris-based group mentioned in a press release. She was questioned and her belongings had been searched 3 times earlier than she was deported with out clarification.
Reporters With out Borders mentioned it was the primary time any of its representatives had been denied entry or detained on the Hong Kong airport.
“We’re appalled by this unacceptable remedy of our colleague, who was merely attempting to do her job,” mentioned Rebecca Vincent, the group’s director of campaigns.
The Hong Kong authorities didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Hong Kong final month enacted an area nationwide safety legislation referred to as Article 23, which builds on a broader nationwide safety legislation Beijing imposed in 2020 and targets overseas interference and different crimes.
Hong Kong and Chinese language officers say each legal guidelines had been crucial to revive stability after anti-government protests roiled the town for months in 2019 and typically turned violent.
However critics say the brand new legislation will solely additional erode civil liberties in Hong Kong, a former British colony that was promised its political freedoms could be preserved for 50 years when it returned to Chinese language rule in 1997.
Bielakowska was touring to Hong Kong to fulfill with journalists and monitor the trial of media tycoon Jimmy Lai, founding father of the defunct pro-democracy tabloid Apple Each day. Lai, 76, is being tried on nationwide safety costs and faces attainable life in jail.
Bielakowska and different Reporters With out Borders representatives efficiently entered Hong Kong twice final yr, as soon as for the beginning of Lai’s trial in December. A colleague she was touring with on this journey, Asia-Pacific bureau director Cédric Alviani, had entered Hong Kong with out incident however left later Wednesday.
“This ordeal demonstrates how a lot the Hong Kong authorities worry NGO staff and human rights defenders who search to report on the authoritarian local weather that has taken maintain within the territory that was as soon as a bastion of press freedom,” mentioned Bielakowska, a Polish nationwide.
Hong Kong has skilled a dramatic decline in press freedom in recent times, falling to one hundred and fortieth out of 180 nations and territories in Reporters With out Borders’ 2023 World Press Freedom Index, down from seventieth in 2018.
In one other high-profile media-related case, two senior editors from Stand Information, a pro-democracy newspaper that was forcibly closed in December 2021, are accused below a colonial-era sedition legislation punishable by as much as two years in jail. The decision of their trial is predicted April 29.
Final month, the U.S.-funded media outlet Radio Free Asia mentioned it was closing its bureau within the metropolis, citing the newly enacted Article 23 laws.
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