INTERNATIONAL: Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam has said on Tuesday, 4 January that she could not accept suggestions that press freedom in the city faces "extinction", just days after police raided an online media outlet and arrested seven people including senior editors.

The Chief Executive of Hongkong was speaking at a weekly news conference as another independent online outlet, Citizen News, has ceased operations in the face of what it described as a "deteriorating" media environment.

She has said that press freedom has a lot of criticisms, especially from the western media about the closure of these two online media organisations. She has mentioned that on behalf of these two organisations and the responsible people to explain what do they mean by 'a chilling effect', but she has claimed that certainly she would strongly refute any allegation that this is related to the implementation of the national security law. If implementation of the national security law would undermine press freedom it would not be seeing any press freedom in the western world.

She has added, press freedom in Hong Kong faces extinction, or Hong Kong free press faces collapse. She has said that she just could not accept that sort of allegations. But nothing is more important than the rule of law in Hong Kong. And journalists and media organisations have to respect and comply with the law. If they are fearful of not being able to comply with the law then they have to make up their mind and take the necessary decisions.

Hong Kong has returned to Chinese rule in 1997 with the promise that wide-ranging individual rights, including a free press, would be protected. But rights groups and some Western governments say freedoms have been eroded, in particular since Beijing imposed a national security law on Hong Kong in 2020.