2014 wasn’t a good year for journalists and political satirists. Two American reporters were among a handful of Western hostages beheaded by the militant group ISIS in August and September. After that came a series of cyber attacks on Sony Pictures for ridiculing North Korea’s paramount leader Kim Jong-un in the comedy The Interview . Here in Hong Kong, we learned in horror the brutal knife attack on Kevin Lau (劉進圖), former chief editor of the Ming Pao Daily , outside his apartment building on that fateful February morning. It remains unclear whom Lau had ticked off for him to be stabbed six times in the back and legs. "We are all Charlie" Those who had hoped that 2015 would be a better year for free speech had their bubbles burst only days after they put down the champagne flutes and party hats. On 7 January, heavily-armed Islamic extremists stormed the headquarters of Charlie Hebdo in central Paris and murdered the magazine’s lead cartoonists. Firsthand acco...
A biweekly column on Hong Kong by Jason Y. Ng