HONG KONG — A consultant of Reporters Without Borders used to be deported from Hong Kong upon arrival Wednesday, the advocacy staff mentioned, in what it referred to as a “new decline” in press freedom within the Chinese territory.
Aleksandra Bielakowska, an advocacy officer for Reporters Without Borders who’s founded in Taiwan, used to be detained for 6 hours at Hong Kong International Airport, the Paris-based staff mentioned in a remark. She used to be puzzled and her property have been searched 3 times prior to she used to be deported with out clarification.
Reporters Without Borders mentioned it used to be the primary time any of its representatives have been denied entry or detained on the Hong Kong airport.
“We are appalled by this unacceptable treatment of our colleague, who was simply trying to do her job,” mentioned Rebecca Vincent, the crowd’s director of campaigns.
The Hong Kong authorities didn’t in an instant reply to a request for remark.
Hong Kong ultimate month enacted a neighborhood nationwide safety regulation referred to as Article 23, which builds on a broader nationwide safety regulation Beijing imposed in 2020 and goals international interference and different crimes.
Hong Kong and Chinese officers say each regulations have been vital to repair balance after anti-government protests roiled the town for months in 2019 and once in a while grew to become violent.
But critics say the brand new regulation will best additional erode civil liberties in Hong Kong, a former British colony that used to be promised its political freedoms can be preserved for fifty years when it returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
Bielakowska used to be touring to Hong Kong to meet with reporters and track the trial of media rich person Jimmy Lai, founding father of the defunct pro-democracy tabloid Apple Daily. Lai, 76, is being attempted on nationwide safety fees and faces imaginable lifestyles in jail.
Bielakowska and different Reporters Without Borders representatives effectively entered Hong Kong two times ultimate 12 months, as soon as for the beginning of Lai’s trial in December. A colleague she used to be touring with in this commute, Asia-Pacific bureau director Cédric Alviani, had entered Hong Kong with out incident however left later Wednesday.
“This ordeal demonstrates how much the Hong Kong authorities fear NGO workers and human rights defenders who seek to report on the authoritarian climate that has taken hold in the territory that was once a bastion of press freedom,” mentioned Bielakowska, a Polish nationwide.
Hong Kong has skilled a dramatic decline in press freedom in recent times, falling to one hundred and fortieth out of 180 nations and territories in Reporters Without Borders’ 2023 World Press Freedom Index, down from seventieth in 2018.
In any other high-profile media-related case, two senior editors from Stand News, a pro-democracy newspaper that used to be forcibly closed in December 2021, are accused underneath a colonial-era sedition regulation punishable by way of up to two years in jail. The verdict of their trial is predicted April 29.
Last month, the U.S.-funded media outlet Radio Free Asia mentioned it used to be remaining its bureau within the town, bringing up the newly enacted Article 23 regulation.