The Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Hong Kong is concerned by the repeated cancellations of the Hong Kong Journalists Association’s (HKJA) annual fundraising gala by the host venues, and their implications for press freedom in the city.

HKJA is a non-profit organisation that advocates press freedom and supports journalists and journalism in Hong Kong.

If this trend of cancellations were to continue, it risks tarnishing Hong Kong’s image as an international business and financial centre.

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Hong Kong is urging Cambodian authorities to reverse their decision to deny re-entry to British journalist Gerald Flynn and to immediately facilitate his return to Cambodia so that he can continue to do his important work. 

Flynn, an investigative and environmental journalist, has lived and reported in Cambodia since 2019, and held a valid work permit and multiple-entry business visa. Despite this, he was denied re-entry to Cambodia on January 5 while returning from a brief visit to Thailand. Authorities alleged his visa was “fake,” but did not provide Flynn further details. Cambodian immigration officials also informed Flynn that he would never be allowed to return to Cambodia because he had been placed on a “blacklist” on November 25, 2024.

Flynn’s exclusion appears to have been an act of retaliation for appearing as a source in a France24 documentary three days earlier. The documentary questioned the efficacy of Cambodian carbon offsetting projects. Prior to appearing in the documentary, Flynn’s reporting had uncovered environmental crimes and the destruction of natural resources across the country, most recently for U.S. environmental news outlet Mongabay.

Since 2022, Cambodia has fallen nine places in the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index because of such heavy-handed intimidation and retaliation tactics. Cambodian journalist Mech Dara was jailed for almost a month last fall in an apparent attempt to silence one of the country’s most prominent reporters. His arrest followed the forced closure in 2023 of Voice of Democracy, the country’s leading independent media outlet, at which Dara had covered the troubling rise of industrial-scale scamming compounds across Cambodia.

The FCC supports all reporters’ right to cover stories without fear of harassment or arrest. We urge Cambodian authorities to reverse course and permit Gerald Flynn to re-enter the country.

Four years after the military seized power and ousted the democratically elected government in Myanmar, The Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Hong Kong continues to be alarmed and deeply concerned at the deteriorating conditions for journalists and media workers there.

Since February 2021, the military junta has cracked down on Myanmar’s media in an effort to silence any reporting critical of the junta and its actions. Regime authorities have revoked the operating licenses of independent news outlets, banned the use of satellite dishes and instituted a series of partial and complete internet shutdowns. 

Individual journalists have also been harassed, detained, tortured and sentenced to jail terms. According to the Independent Press Council Myanmar, as of 25 January 2025, 43 journalists/media workers are still imprisoned.  All were taken into custody on anti-state allegations and many were denied legal representation. 

The FCC reiterates its condemnation of the targeting, threatening, detention, torturing and killing of journalists and media workers. We call on the Myanmar military regime to cease violence, release all those unjustly detained, and to uphold freedom of expression, including the freedom to seek, receive and impart information.

Journalism is not a crime, and media workers should be allowed to carry out their work without fear of threats to their safety and well being.

As the world marks the one-year anniversary of the Israel-Hamas war, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Hong Kong remembers the scores of journalists killed or injured in the ongoing conflict. The FCC calls on all parties to protect the journalists who are covering the war with great courage and under extremely difficult conditions.

Of the more than 42,000 people killed since the war began, at least 128 of them were journalists and media workers, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (“CPJ”), making this the deadliest conflict for journalists since the group began gathering data in 1992. They include 123 Palestinians and three Lebanese, as well as two Israelis who were killed when the war began with Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel.

Though Israel denies targeting media workers, CPJ has concluded that at least five of the Palestinian and Lebanese journalists who were killed were directly targeted by Israeli forces in violation of international law.

The killings, along with censorship, arrests, internet disruptions, the blocking of independent media outlets from entering the Gaza Strip, the destruction of newsrooms and other media infrastructure, and the displacement of Gaza journalists and media workers, have severely hampered coverage of a war that threatens to spread across the region.

The Club expresses its deepest condolences to the colleagues and loved ones of the journalists and other innocent victims who have been killed, as well as the journalists whose families have been killed in the conflict they are covering.

The Club further calls on all parties to ensure the safety of journalists on the ground in Israel and Gaza. Journalists are civilians who should not be targeted, and their ability to freely and safely do their jobs is vital for understanding the conflict and working toward its end.

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Hong Kong is calling for the release of Mech Dara, a Cambodian investigative reporter who was arrested this week in an apparent attempt to silence one of the country’s leading journalists.

Dara was arrested by military police on Sept. 30 at a highway toll booth while driving with a relative to Phnom Penh. Officials initially said little about his arrest other than confirming his detention at an undisclosed location. On Tuesday, he was charged with criminal incitement over social media posts he made in September and sent to pretrial detention by a Phnom Penh court.

The court objected to photos Dara posted on social media showing contrasting images of quarrying activity at a revered mountain in southeastern Cambodia. Local officials denounced the post, said there was no excavation at the site, and accused him of inciting “social disorder,” which can be prosecuted under a criminal incitement statute often abused as a tool of intimidation and suppression.

Dara’s arrest follows last year’s forced closure of Cambodia’s leading independent media outlet, Voice of Democracy. Dara was a reporter for VOD, where he helped uncover the rise of cyber-scam compounds in Cambodia whose bosses often use slave labor to defraud people around the world. The reporting earned him international renown, including an award from the U.S. Department of State.

Cambodia’s use of such heavy-handed tactics to intimidate journalists and shutter news outlets has sharply curtailed independent news coverage and prompted the country to slide precipitously in global press freedom indexes. The FCC supports all reporters’ right to cover stories without fear of harassment or arrest and urges Cambodian authorities to release Dara from prison.

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Hong Kong is extremely concerned by reports that journalists in Hong Kong have been harassed and threatened online and offline because of their work.

The Hong Kong Journalists Association has reported that journalists, along with their family and associates, have been subjects of a targeted campaign of harassment in recent months. These bullying messages are illegal, and should be condemned not only for the violence they seek to inflict, but also for their threats to the freedom of the press as it is guaranteed as a fundamental right in Hong Kong.

We advocate for journalists’ right to continue to carry out their work unhindered, free of harassment and danger, and we stand in solidarity with all journalists in Hong Kong who seek to work and live in a safe environment.

We note that reports have been made to the authorities and ask that they urgently investigate these reported threats to ensure the safety of journalists working in the city.