JOINT STATEMENT ON HKJA CHAIR FIRED BY WALL STREET JOURNAL
We, the undersigned media organizations, stand with Hong Kong Journalists Association chair Selina Cheng, who says she has been fired from her job at the Wall Street Journal for her involvement with the association.
According to the HKJA, other officers of the association and other members of Hong Kong media have received similar pressure to refrain from taking on leadership roles in the city’s press organizations.
Our organizations represent media workers operating in a region where press freedom is challenged and needs to be defended through collective action and the WSJ’s termination of Ms. Cheng for her role in a press freedom organization raises concerns of the further erosion of that freedom in Hong Kong and in the region in general.
We understand that circumstances in Hong Kong may make newsrooms hesitant to support media workers’ campaigns and efforts for press freedom but corporations owe their staff support when they advocate for rights guaranteed by law and that many media outlets claim to hold dear.
Ms. Cheng’s situation and the situation of other Hong Kong journalists facing the same pressure highlights how media workers often only have their fellow media workers to rely on.
We call on other media and press freedom organizations to stand with Hong Kong’s journalists when their newsrooms and employers cannot or will not. Journalists must rely on each other for support. We stand in solidarity!
Who we are
The Press Freedom Monitoring in Southeast Asia (PFMSea) is a consortium of 7 independent press associations and news agencies in six countries – Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Timor Leste, and Thailand – to monitor attacks, threats, or violations committed against journalists, media workers, press institutions, as well as the press freedom situation in the region of Southeast Asia. We publish our findings, which are updated regularly, on https://pfmsea.org/
Our partner organizations consist of: the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) Indonesia, Association Journalist Timor Leste (AJTL), Timor Leste, Cambodian Journalists Alliance Association (CamboJA), Cambodia, Centre for Independent Journalism (CIJ), Malaysia, Gerakan Media Merdeka (GeramM), Malaysia, National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP), The Philippine, and Prachatai, Thailand.