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KongHub Report Under Fire

Hong Kong police demand an independent news outlet remove a news report about the suicide of a female officer — but the outlet refuses, citing public interest.
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Hong Kong police sent a letter on March 11 to the overseas Hong Kong media outlet KongHub demanding that it remove a news report on the February 25 suicide of a female inspector at Kwun Tong Police Station. The police alleged that the outlet had violated the territory’s Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance. KongHub refused to comply with the request, saying that upon seeking legal advice it believed police were misapplying the law. Officers’ names and badge numbers constitute official identifiers, the outlet argued, not private personal data.

KongHub further held in its public statement on the case that if authorities insisted the the outlet’s conduct was a privacy matter, the proper course of action under the Ordinance was a formal cessation notice issued by the Privacy Commissioner — not an email from the Cyber Security and Technology Crime Bureau, the police unit combating technology crime. KongHub noted that its report had clearly identified certain details as coming from a single source and awaiting verification, and that the police’s demand to suppress the report entirely, rather than seeking factual corrections, raised wider concerns about press freedom.

David Bandurski is the director of the China Media Project, leading the project’s research and partnerships. David joined the team in 2004 after completing his master’s degree at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. He is the author of Dragons in Diamond Village (Penguin/Melville House), a book of reportage about urbanization and social activism in China, and co-editor of Investigative Journalism in China (HKU Press).

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