On June 10, FactWire announced that it was shutting down with immediate effect, becoming the tenth Hong Kong news organization to close in less than 12 months.
FactWire had used an innovative crowdfunding model to produce Chinese-language investigative journalism, exemplifying the type of award-winning independent media that once flourished in the territory. But just as many feared when Beijing imposed the National Security Law (NSL) on June 30, 2020, the landscape for free expression in Hong Kong is now increasingly desolate.
Under the NSL, Hong Kong’s total score in Freedom in the World, Freedom House’s annual report on political rights and civil liberties, has dropped by 12 points, from 55 to 43, on a scale of 0 to 100. The score declined by nine points in 2021 alone, marking the year’s third-worst decline globally after Myanmar and Afghanistan, which experienced a military coup and conquest by the Taliban, respectively. This is especially significant given that most of the countries and territories with deteriorating freedoms only see their scores decline a point or two in any given year.
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