Hong Kong: why journalists should fear “Article 23”, a domestic sequel of Beijing-imposed National Security Law

Like the National Security Law, the “Article 23 bill” is vaguely worded, paving the way to arbitrary application by judges, and may apply to acts committed outside Hong Kong’s borders. With this new text, possessing publications considered “seditious”, such as the independent newspaper Apple Daily, can become a crime punished by up to three years in jail. A suspect of a crime against national security can now be detained for 16 days without charges and can only access a lawyer after 48 hours. The simple fact of communicating with foreign organisations or diplomats could be considered as “foreign interference”, which carries a 14-year prison sentence.

The bill is named after Article 23 of theBasic Law, Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, which specifies that the territory should adopt its own national security law, but whose enactment was dropped following massive protests in 2003. In 2020, after another series of wide-scale protests, China imposed on Hong Kong with its version of a National Security Law (NSL), that was used to prosecute a number of journalists and press freedom defenders includingApple Daily founder Jimmy Lai. 

Hong Kong ranks 140th out of 180 in RSF’s 2023 World Press Freedom Index, having plummeted from 18th place in the span of two decades. China itself ranks 179th out of 180 in the 2023 RSF World Press Freedom Index and is the world's largest jailer of journalists and press freedom defenders with at least 121 detained, including 12 in Hong Kong.