Hong Kong court overturns reporter’s conviction
HONG KONG — In a rare victory for journalism amid a crackdown on the news media in Hong Kong, the city’s top court on Monday overturned the conviction of a prominent reporter who had produced a documentary that was critical of the police.
Choy Yuk-ling, who also goes by the name Bao Choy, is best known in Hong Kong for producing investigative documentaries examining police conduct in 2019, when the city was roiled by antigovernment protests.
Among the documentaries she produced was a prizewinning episode of “Hong Kong Connection,” a news program by the city’s public broadcaster RTHK. The episode examined who was behind a mob attack on a group of protesters and commuters in a train station on July 21, 2019, that left 45 people injured, and why the police were slow to respond.
Choy had used a public database to look up the license plates of vehicles caught on video transporting the suspected attackers, and traced them to community leaders in Hong Kong’s outlying villages. She was arrested in 2020 and found guilty the next year of making false statements to obtain car registry records. A court ordered her to pay a fine of 6,000 Hong Kong dollars, about $775. She later appealed the conviction.
On Monday, five judges from the Court of Final Appeal voted unanimously to overturn the conviction. They argued that Choy may not have knowingly made a false statement, given that many news media companies had filed similar applications for information. By convicting Choy on the basis of inferring that she had broken the law knowingly, “substantial and grave injustice was done to her,” the court said in the ruling.