Top News
Hong Kong journalists in exile and Reporters Without Borders (RSF) published a special digital and print edition of Apple Daily to mark the fourth anniversary of the paper’s forced shuttering.
The Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong (CFHK) Foundation marked the anniversary of the shutdown by remembering the seven Apple Daily staff still in prison, none of whom have been sentenced despite being detained for more than 1,400 days. (All except Jimmy Lai, whose trial is ongoing, have pled guilty.)
Bountied Hong Kongers Finn Lau and Chloe Cheung with
RSF’s special anniversary edition of Apple Daily.
CFHK Foundation released a report: “Hong Kong’s Greater Bay Area and the CCP’s Strategy to Influence U.S. State and Local Officials.” Report author Shannon Van Sant explores the risks posed by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) efforts to use the economic opportunities in the Greater Bay Area, an economic zone comprising Hong Kong, Macau, and cities in Guangdong Province, to foster potentially dangerous relationships with U.S. state and local officials.
CFHK Foundation Public Affairs and Strategy Advisor Shannon Van Sant:
“It is vital for U.S. local officials to understand the risks of engagement with Beijing and Hong Kong, to protect both themselves and U.S. national security. Even on the local level, dialogue with Hong Kong officials should also be principled, and include speaking up for the nearly 2,000 political prisoners jailed there since 2019, as well as victims of Hong Kong’s transnational repression here in the U.S.”
Newsweek’s Didi Kirsten Tatlow reported on the story, which was also picked up by Cantonese outlet Points Media.
Hong Kong
Hong Kong lawmakers passed amendments to the city’s union laws, banning anyone convicted of national security offences from ever serving as an officer of any trade union, including on the board of directors or initiating a registration for a new union. The new laws also require foreign funding for trade unions to be vetted by lawmakers.
The Court of Appeal scheduled a September 2026 hearing for former Stand News editor Patrick Lam’s appeal against his September 2024 sedition conviction.
The League of Social Democrats, one of the last democratic political parties still standing in Hong Kong, is expected to disband.
Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee warned that “soft resistance” lurking throughout society would lead to pervasive national security threats.
UK – Hong Kong
The UK government’s long-delayed “China Audit,” intended as a standalone document that would act as a roadmap for London’s policies toward Beijing, arrived folded into just three paragraphs within a new National Security Strategy. Responding to parliamentary questions about the Audit, Foreign Secretary David Lammy said: “Not engaging with China is no choice at all. China’s power is an inescapable fact.”
The Sunday Times reported that Housing Secretary Angela Rayner is poised to approve the new China super-embassy plan in London, prompting residents near the proposed Royal Mint site to start fundraising to launch a judicial review of the process.
The Media Show’s Katie Razzall interviewed Sebastien Lai for BBC radio about what Apple Daily meant to Hong Kong and the government’s treatment of his father, the newspaper’s founder Jimmy Lai, after he decided to stand with his staff and face down the authorities. Jimmy Lai has been imprisoned for more than 1,600 days, mostly in solitary confinement.
CFHK Foundation and the Henry Jackson Society will co-host a panel event on Wednesday July 2 in Portcullis House, London: “Closing the Loopholes: Hong Kong’s Role in Global Sanctions Evasion.” To attend, RSVP to david.green@thecfhk.org.
North America – Hong Kong
CFHK Foundation Policy and Advocacy Coordinator Frances Hui submitted written testimony to the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission’s hearing on “Transnational Repression: Trends and Policy Approaches.”
Outgoing U.S. consul general in Hong Kong Gregory May, who will relocate to Beijing after a three-year stint in the Special Administrative Region, criticised the use of Hong Kong’s National Security Law to jail political prisoners, singling out Jimmy Lai but noting that the U.S. remains concerned as well with the hundreds of prisoners who “are in jail for peaceful expression of political views.” May also highlighted the use of transnational repression targeting U.S. residents.
The U.S. consulate condemned the Hong Kong government for warning teachers against attending U.S. Independence Day events on July 4.
International – Hong Kong
The European Union and the People’s Republic of China held the 40th session of the EU-China Human Rights Dialogue in Brussels. The EU called for the immediate and unconditional release of British citizen and media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai and of barrister and human rights defender Chow Hang-tung.
The CFHK Foundation endorsed a statement from Luo Shengchun, wife of detained Chinese human rights lawyer Ding Jiaxi, asking UN Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, Margaret Satterthwaite, what actions she recommends to hold China accountable for its ongoing crackdown on human rights lawyers and defenders in China, as well as Hong Kongers and Uyghurs beyond its borders.
🔥Flame of Freedom Blog
Hong Kong Five Years On
This blog is authored by Jemimah Steinfeld, Chief Executive at Index on Censorship.
“There is no downplaying the significance of the passage of the National Security Law on June 30, 2020, of the thousands who were arrested because of it, the newspapers shuttered, the pro-democracy groups disbanded, and the hundreds of thousands who fled. It was, of course, not the beginning of repression in Hong Kong. I have vivid memories from 2018 of the journalist Evan Fowler telling me, voice shaking, that it was a city “being ripped apart”. Nor was it the end of repression. “In reality there has not been a single eye-catching moment when everything suddenly changed” wrote Jeff Wasserstrom and Sharon Yam in New Lines last year who spoke of the “stop-and-go pace of repression.” The passage of the National Security Law was a “go” moment – a particularly big one – and one followed by other “go” moments.”
Read the full blog.