Attack on Ming Pao editor latest of several on Hong Kong journalists

Yesterday's attack on former Ming Pao chief editor Kevin Lau Chun-to was just another in a long list of assaults against Hong Kong media people down the years.

The perpetrators of most of these attacks, and those who ordered them, have still not been brought to justice.

In May 1996, veteran journalist Leung Tin-wai was stabbed in the back. The attackers then hacked off his left forearm and both thumbs. The assault came shortly after he announced the launch of the publication Surprise Weekly.

Leung, then 53, survived after undergoing a 17-hour operation to reattach his forearm. The public, outraged by the brutality of the attack, raised HK$5 million as a bounty for the arrest of Leung's assailants, who were never caught.

In August 1998, then-Commercial Radio show host Albert Cheng King-hon suffered six deep stab wounds to his limbs when two men attacked him with knives in the radio station's car park. The assailants were never caught. The driver who helped them in the attack was jailed for five months.

"Those people were definitely after my life," Cheng, then 52, said at the time. "They would not have chopped me so many times otherwise."