Hong Kong’s Ming Pao newspaper will stop publishing works by well-known political cartoonist Wong Kei-kwan after the local government criticized the artist’s work.
According to the Associated Press (AP) news agency, the Chinese-language daily did not specify why it would stop publishing works by Wong, who uses the pen name Zunzi.
“Ming Pao would like to express his gratitude to Zunzi for witnessing how times have changed with us over the past four decades,” the editorial office responsible for publishing the cartoonist’s work said.
Zunzi’s work caricatures the frustrations of Hong Kong society since the days when the city was controlled by the United Kingdom.
Several cartoons drawn by Wong have been criticized in recent months by different government departments, including Security.
More recently, the Youth and Internal Affairs office criticized the work for “blurring” the government’s role in nominating local committee members who will elect district council candidates later this year.
In Zunzi’s cartoon, a man tells a woman that even though some people have failed exams and suffer from health problems, they can be appointed to commissions, as long as “higher officials” see fit.
Under the government’s plan for district council reform, local committees, made up of many government supporters, will elect about 40% of the 470 seats.
Only 20% of seats – against around 90% – will be directly elected by the public, a figure below the level set during British colonial rule.
Both Wong and government departments that complained about the artist’s work did not respond to an AP request for comment.
It is not clear if the government had a role in the decision to publish it, the news agency said.
Beijing imposed a national security law on the Chinese administrative region in 2021, following mass pro-democracy protests in 2019.
The Apple Daily, a daily critical of Chinese power that had supported the anti-government movement, closed that summer after the paper’s funds were frozen and some of its executives accused of violating the National Security Law were arrested.
Hong Kong has fallen to 148th place in the 2022 world press freedom index of the international non-governmental organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
In 2002, when the index was first published, the territory was ranked 18th and considered a haven for free expression in Asia.
Source: TSF
