New York, September 30, 2026—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on the Hong Kong government to release independent journalist Tang Ho-wing, who was arrested on Wednesday after covering a recent gathering in the latest sedition case.
Police said they arrested a 37-year-old man under Hong Kong’s Safeguarding National Security Ordinance on suspicion of acting with “seditious intention,” according to a
statement
. Local
media
identified
the man as Tang, founder of the independent media outlet
Boom News
, which mainly operates through social media platforms.
“Reporting is not sedition,” said CPJ Asia-Pacific Director Beh Lih Yi. “The arrest of independent journalist Tang Ho-wing shows the government’s intolerance for facts. Authorities must release him immediately and stop intimidating journalists in Hong Kong for doing their jobs.”
The arrest came after Boom News’
August 31 coverage
of a small gathering in Hong Kong, featuring participants holding up yellow umbrellas to mark the seventh anniversary of a
2019 police crackdown
on protests over a
contested bill
that would have allowed for the extradition of Hong Kong criminal suspects to stand trial abroad, including in mainland China.
Two of the umbrellas at the rally carried the logos of the now-defunct Apple Daily newspaper, whose founder and publisher, Jimmy Lai, is
serving a 20-year sentence
on charges of foreign collusion and sedition.
Boom News covers Hong Kong’s current affairs through social media platforms, including
Facebook
, where it has 87,000 followers, and on
YouTube
, with nearly 51,000 subscribers.
Tang’s arrest is the fourth sedition case involving a journalist in just over three months. Three other journalists, who are also booksellers, were
detained
in separate investigations in
June
and
July
.
China consistently ranks as the world’s worst jailer of journalists, with at least 50 behind bars, according to CPJ’s
latest data
.
The Hong Kong government did not
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