Chan Pui-man
Jailed under Hong Kong security laws
by Katherine Cowles
On the evening Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy newspaper sent its last edition to press, its deputy chief editor Chan Pui-man left the newsroom to join colleagues on the rooftop as they waved to crowds gathered five floors below. Hundreds had journeyed in the rain to the Apple Daily offices in a remote, industrial part of the city to bid farewell to the popular tabloid, brutally shut down by the authorities after 26 years in print.
They shone torches, blinking like beacons in the dark, and thanked Apple Daily workers with cheers of “We won’t forget you!” and “Add oil!” – a rallying cry used by pro-democracy protesters to fuel their comrades.
The staff were emotional, and shouted back to their supporters. But Chan, recalls one former colleague, stood silently by her side for ten, maybe 15 minutes. Then she went back to work.
Chan, 52, joined Apple Daily as a security reporter in 1996, a year after it was founded, and in March 2015, became the paper’s first female associate publisher. A former colleague describes her as a “very careful person”. Clare (not her real name) says, “I was not very close working with her because she was very senior, but we met each other in the office quite often. She seemed a very nice person and never showed she was the boss. She’s very good at picking front line stories and she knew how to do news with a very special, sharp angle.”
We get a sense of Chan’s work ethic in comments made in an interview published just days before the paper closed. “On a day off, one is merely an ordinary citizen observing what is happening in Hong Kong. As a reporter, however, one can focus the energy on following developments.” In the same interview, she tells a story of a time in 2011 when, reporting on the ground in Japan during the Fukushima nuclear disaster, she refused to return when the office tried to recall her over fears of the fallout. “I thought to myself, you’re a reporter, report.” She went on to say, “There’s this little occupational disease journalists have. Whenever there is a disaster or major event, you want to get as close to the scene as possible. Hong Kong is the largest scene right now.”
Hong Kong’s judicial, individual and press freedoms are crumbling. Once a bastion of independent media, it has in the past year fallen from 80th to 148th out of 180 countries in the RSF World Press Freedom Index, with China itself ranking 175. Apple Daily was the first major news organisation targeted after Beijing – through chief executive Carrie Lam – imposed the draconian National Security Law (NSL) following mass protests and unrest. Founder and owner Jimmy Lai was arrested under the new law in August 2020. The 75-year-old media magnate, whose newspaper lashed out at the “evil” NSL, is accused of colluding with foreign forces to seek international sanctions against Hong Kong and Chinese officials. He faces life in prison.
Almost a year after Lai’s arrest, on 17 June 2021, in co-ordinated early morning raids on the newsroom and homes of Apple Daily staff, police seized documents, around 40 computers, and made five arrests, including Chan. The paper’s closure was made certain after assets of £1.69 million were frozen. “There was a terror among us,” says Clare, whose computer was one of those seized. “There was a real horror for many of our colleagues because you don’t know what’s left inside your computer or if they can recover some deleted documents, you don’t know how they would use those materials against you.” There were rumours they were going to arrest other editors and protesters. “It was very terrifying.” Clare stayed “out of duty”, but being “just a reporter”, she felt protected; it was the bosses she truly feared for.
After being bailed on 18 June, Chan and the other executives bravely returned to the newsroom floor. There was a conversation among reporters about whether it was safe to use their bylines, and for the final time in her 16-year career at Apple Daily, Clare signed hers above her 3,000-word report on – and the irony is not lost on her – the one-year anniversary of the NSL. The final edition went to print on 24 June 2021. The paper, with an average circulation of 86,000, sold one million copies; residents in the city of 7.5 million people queued up for their souvenir issue. Around midnight, the website was erased along with 26 years of content – everything from reports into the hidden wealth of Chinese officials, to paparazzi snaps and celebrity gossip. But not before the final news update was published at 11.55pm announcing the resignation of Chan Pui-man.
Now Chan is now being held within the white-washed walls of Tai Lam prison. Her bail was revoked on 21 July 2021 and, four months later, in November, along with five male Apple Daily executives, she pleaded guilty at the High Court to colluding with foreign forces under the NSL. Their guilty pleas will reduce their sentence from a maximum life in jail to three to ten years, and Chan is believed to be among those who might be given further remission after agreeing to help prosecutors in the trial against their former boss Lai (due to start on December 1, but since adjourned after the Hong Kong government sought to block his right to representation by a British barrister).
Chan, says an anonymous colleague, is glad she has no children as it makes the burden of her imprisonment a little lighter. But perhaps the most poignant and unusual aspect of her case is that almost six months into her detention, a similar fate befell her husband Chung Pui-kuen, the editor-in-chief of the now defunct pro-democracy news website Stand News, who was arrested on sedition charges. For some months, husband and wife had at least enjoyed the small mercy of face-to-face visits. Now, with Chung, 52, in a cell 20km away, they are forced to communicate through friends and family.
What’s left of Hong Kong’s free media has, either by stealth or brutality, been almost entirely dismantled, according to a report by a UK-based advocacy group. “The past year’s crackdown on Hong Kong’s independent media has undoubtedly shocked the world, but democracies have failed to adequately respond,” says RSF East Asia bureau head Cédric Alviani. “The strongest measures taken – two EU parliament resolutions and sanctions imposed by the US government – are clearly insufficient.”
This weak response, he warns, serves as “tacit encouragement” for China’s authoritarian takeover, and failure to act will mean the Apple Daily journalists “will remain in jail for the rest of their lives”. “The number of media shutdowns and journalists detained is bound to skyrocket,” he adds.
Now, each day in a Hong Kong newsroom is like working in a “government department”, says Clare, with the journalists caught up in sham trials replaced by “dumb” pro-Beijing editors, robotically toeing the party line. “There’s no need for press conferences, no NGOs, no civil societies, nothing… there aren’t any sources who will talk or give comment,” she says. Feeling powerless, her journalist friends have either left Hong Kong or retrained, working as Uber drivers or in restaurants; one took a course in sewage management, their old media outlet having been so thoroughly sanitised by Beijing. “Everyone on the front line of democracy is wiped out,” she says, “all wiped out.”