MCLC: Ming Pao editor slashed (1)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Ming Pao editor slashed (1)
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Source: Sinosphere blog, NYT
(2/27/14):http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/27/after-slashing-of-
hong-kong-journalist-concerns-about-catching-attackers/

Journalists Fear Attack on Hong Kong Editor Won’t Be Solved
By GERRY MULLANY

A day after the stabbing of a crusading former editor of a prominent Hong
Kong newspaper, local news outlets expressed fear that the assailants
would go unpunished just as similar previous assaults on local journalists
have not been solved.

Kevin Lau Chun-to, the former chief editor of Ming Pao, was recovering on
Thursday in a Hong Kong hospital where he remained in critical condition
with slashing wounds to his back and legs. Albert Ho, a member of Hong
Kong’s Legislative Council who himself was beaten by assailants in 2006,
visited the hospital and talked to family members.

“It will take a long time for him to recover,” Mr. Ho said of Mr. Lau.
“The cause behind it, nobody knows.”

The news of the attack dominated Thursday’s front page of Ming Pao, with
surveillance images of the suspects splayed across the top of the page,
and the “Ming Pao” nameplate in black instead of its customary red.

The newspaper said it was offering a reward of 1 million Hong Kong
dollars, about $129,000, for information leading to the arrest of the
attacker. Its front-page editorial on the case said the attack had “left
journalists with an inexpressible feeling, a fear that freedom is steadily
vanishing.”

And Apple Daily, a populist daily newspaper, cited concerns that “previous
attacks on journalists have gone unresolved” in Hong Kong.

In the latest case, the police said that Mr. Lau was slashed three times
by a man who then fled on a motorbike with an accomplice.
The police investigating the attack on Mr. Lau have a few factors in their
favor: not only the reward, but surveillance photos of the suspects and
saturation media coverage of the attack in both newspapers and on
television.

Still, an article in The South China Morning Post
<http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1435900/attack-ming-pao-editor-
latest-several-hong-kong-journalists> illustrated how the police have
repeatedly failed to crack previous cases of assaults on journalists,
saying, “The perpetrators of most of these attacks, and those who ordered
them, have still not been brought to justice.”

It noted how one particularly brutal attack, the 1996 case in which a
veteran journalist, Leung Tin-wai, was stabbed in the back and had both
thumbs and a forearm cut off, did not result in arrests despite a reward
of 5 million Hong Kong dollars. The Post also said that the police
characterized Wednesday’s attack as a “classic Triad hit”  — a reference
to the criminal societies that operate in Hong Kong.

Still, both Hong Kong’s chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, and the United
States counsul general in Hong Kong, Clifford A. Hart Jr., expressed
confidence that the attackers would be caught.

“We welcome the Hong Kong government’s condemnation of this vicious crime
and commitment to conduct a thorough investigation to bring the
perpetrators swiftly to justice,” Mr. Hart said in a statement.

The attack has emerged as another flash point in the tensions between Hong
Kong and mainland China, with many commenters on news websites seeing
Beijing’s hand — directly or indirectly — behind the assault on a
journalist who oversaw coverage that was often highly critical of the
Chinese government.

“There is a well documented history of ‘murky’ attacks on media and
political leaders in Hong Kong who hold views that challenge positions of
the CCP,” one commenter on the New York Times website, Carolyn from
Sydney, Australia, wrote in referring to the Chinese Communist Party.
“There is also a well documented history of relationships between the CCP
and the Triads. Attacks by ‘triad choppers’ have a history in Hong Kong.
This is not new. This one is a particularly brazen attack, related to one
of the best newspapers in the Chinese-language world.”