Opinion | Press freedoms being eroded while Hong Kong sleeps
Albert Cheng says the indifference by one and all to the relentless assaults against Next Media over the past two years brings home the danger we face
Last week's terrorist attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris shocked the world and inspired a global outcry for freedom of the press. Such was its significance that US President Barack Obama was widely criticised for his embarrassing absence in the world leaders' solidarity march in France for free speech.
At about the same time, an outspoken newspaper group in Hong Kong was firebombed. However, the responses from the local government, politicians and even other members of the fourth estate were meek and bordered on the unsympathetic.
A total of three petrol bombs were hurled at the home of Jimmy Lai Chee-ying in Ho Man Tin and his Next Media headquarters in Tseung Kwan O simultaneously in the early hours of Monday. It was the third time Lai's home has been firebombed.
The latest attacks cannot be brushed aside as an isolated incident, coming on the heels of a long list of other acts of criminal intimidation, damage and assault over the past 18 months.
In June 2013, a man rammed a stolen car into the front gate of Lai's residence and left an axe and a knife on the driveway. A week later, two masked men torched bundles of the Apple Daily, a Next Media publication, in a delivery van in Hung Hom. That same month, three masked men threatened two workers with knives at Edinburgh Place in Central and burnt 26,000 copies of Apple Daily.
More recently, mainlanders were suspected to have been mobilised by apparent triad elements to lay siege to the Next Media compound in a bid to disrupt distribution of the newspaper. The gang leaders made it clear they were there because of Lai's leading role in Occupy Central.