‘Climate of fear’: Hong Kong publisher claims printers rejected book on Occupy protests
Company founder voices alarm for freedom of speech and says missing bookseller saga is weighing heavily on city
The chilling effect of the missing bookseller saga has crept into local printing companies, the publisher of a book about the Occupy movement has revealed.
Jason Ng, a lawyer and author, compiled the first English-language account of the 79-day civil unrest in 2014, but his publisher had a hard time finding a printer for the 300-page book.
“Two printing companies turned it down because of the subject matter, and the third agreed to do it on condition that it would stay anonymous,” said Pete Spurrier, the publisher of Umbrellas in Bloom: Hong Kong’s Occupy Movement Uncovered, at the launch last week – more than three months later than he planned.
If you read the three books in sequence, you will definitely feel the increasing pessimism, anger and in some way hopelessness in the city
This is the first time the Briton has been turned down by a local printer. He has published some 60 titles through his company, Blacksmith Books, which he founded in 2003.
“I’m worried about the whole climate of fear that is imposed on publishers and media. It’s no good to have freedom of speech on paper when people are too scared to exercise it, and that would become an issue of self-censorship,” he said.
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The latest book is the final leg of a trilogy that Ng kicked off with Hong Kong State of Mind in 2010, followed by No City for Slow Men in 2013.