Hong Kong magistrate’s suggestion for database-searching journalists ‘unrealistic’, as critics question RTHK reporter’s conviction
- Bao Choy found guilty on Thursday on two counts of providing false statements in relation to a documentary covering a mob attack during the 2019 unrest
- Magistrate suggests reporters write directly to officials when seeking car ownership information
A Hong Kong magistrate’s suggestion for how reporters could obtain information from a government database without falling foul of the law that ensnared an RTHK contributor is simply unrealistic, according to lawyers and analysts.
Legal experts questioned whether Principal Magistrate Ivy Chui Yee-mei gave enough weight to constitutional human rights provisions when finding freelance producer Bao Choy Yuk-ling guilty of providing false statements to secure access to an official database on car ownership.
“The judgment has not considered the public interest and the freedom of press,” human rights law scholar Johannes Chan Man-mun, from the University of Hong Kong, told a radio programme on Friday.
Beijing’s foreign ministry office in Hong Kong hit back at the city’s Foreign Correspondents’ Club and “individual external forces”, a day after the journalists’ body condemned Choy’s conviction.
“No one or no organisation can interfere with the internal affairs of Hong Kong and China on the pretext of press freedom,” a spokesman from the commissioner’s office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
He accused the group of seeking privilege by “upending right and wrong”, and using the name of press freedom to obstruct the government and undermine the city’s stability.