U.S.-funded Radio Free Asia said it closed its Hong Kong bureau Friday, citing a sweeping security law passed by pro-China lawmakers in the city and safety concerns for its reporters and staff.
"We recognize RFA's frontline status — as it is among the last independent news organizations reporting on events happening in Hong Kong in Cantonese and Mandarin," Bay Fang, the organization's president and chief executive, said in a statement released Friday.
"For our audiences in Hong Kong and mainland China, who rely on RFA's timely, uncensored journalism: Rest assured, our programming and content will continue without disruption," she said.
While Radio Free Asia will not have full-time employees in Hong Kong, where it has operated since 1996, the outlet will retain its official media registration in the China-ruled city.
Hong Kong's legislature passed the security measures — known as Article 23 — last week to crack down on dissent by authorizing closed-door trials, expanding the police's ability to detain people longer without charges, and altering the definitions of espionage and state secrets while increasing the penalties for violating both.
"Actions by Hong Kong authorities, including referring to RFA as a 'foreign force', raise serious questions about our ability to operate in safety with the enactment of Article 23," Fang said.
The U.S. State Department blamed Hong Kong's "continuing suppression of media freedom" for the outlet's decision to leave.
"We remain deeply concerned about the deterioration in protection for human rights and fundamental freedoms and the systematic dismantling of Hong Kong's autonomy under the National Security Law and recently passed Article 23 legislation," a State Department spokesperson told Reuters.
The Hong Kong government wouldn't comment on Radio Free Asia's decision, but condemned "all scaremongering and smearing remarks."
"To single out Hong Kong and suggest that journalists would only experience concerns when operating here but not in other countries would be grossly biased, if not outrageous," it said in an emailed message to Reuters.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday announced that the U.S. would impose visa restrictions on a number of Hong Kong officials in the wake of Article 23.
Blinken, in a statement, said the U.S. has chronicled "the intensifying repression and ongoing crackdown by PRC (People's Republic of China) and Hong Kong authorities on civil society, media, and dissenting voices, including through the issuance of bounties and arrest warrants for more than a dozen pro-democracy activists living outside Hong Kong."
