A Hong Kong pirate radio station organized by pro-democracy activists critical of Beijing defied a court injunction and broadcast from a busy shopping area, while a legal battle over the territory's broadcasting laws escalated.
Citizens' Radio broadcast live for about an hour from the Mongkok shopping district late on Thursday, airing a panel discussion about a planned march tomorrow to campaign for democratic reform in Hong Kong, Tsang Kin-shing (
Tsang said police officers gave a copy of a court injunction banning the broadcast to guests of the show but did not arrest anyone.
Before the broadcast, Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Frederick Ma (
Citizens' Radio is at the center of a drawn-out legal battle over Hong Kong's radio licensing laws, which critics say are too arbitrary and may be used to suppress criticism of the Hong Kong and Chinese governments.
The station, which airs phone-ins and discussions about current events and politics, including the highly sensitive issue of the former British colony's transition to full democracy, had been operating without a license for two years.
Tsang said Citizens' Radio had applied for a radio license but was rejected, and the government did not give reasons why.
"Everything is subject to government discretion. The government can grant or deny you a license as long as it wishes. It is not in accordance with the rule of law," Mak Yin-ting (
The government prosecuted Citizens' Radio for broadcasting illegally, but this week a Hong Kong judge dismissed the charges, saying the territory's licensing regulations violated local laws on freedom of expression.
The judge later suspended his ruling after the government said it planned to appeal. The government also separately obtained a court injunction that banned Citizens' Radio from operating in the meantime.
Although Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997, it remains largely autonomous and enjoys freedoms of expression and assembly prohibited on the mainland. However, the media is frequently accused of self-censorship so as not to upset Beijing.
Hong Kong has 13 radio channels, seven of which are run by government-owned Radio Television Hong Kong, with the rest run by two commercial operators.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
RSS