After unsuccessfully requesting Da Kung Pao to retract the defamatory article against him, the founder of Next Media, Chi-Ying Lai, filed a petition with the High Court on the 26th of July, asking for an injunction to prevent Da Kung Pao from defaming him again, as well as damages and an apology. He said he did not want anyone to frame him with false information about Hong Kong’s National Security Law.
According to the filing, the matter in question was a Ta Kung Pao article on June 25 this year with the headline “Hong Kong turmoil leader plans to ‘plant grass’, route exposed, charges 1 million” and other graphics, the content of which defamed the plaintiff Chi-Ying Lai, including the fabrication that Lai planned to abscond from Hong Kong without bail, damaging his reputation, without checking with Lai about the content of the article before publication. The case was published 14 days after the Department of Justice granted bail to Chi-Ying Lai in a number of criminal cases, and the bail issue was no longer news. In addition, Lai said the newspaper was hostile to him, often called the plaintiff by insulting and derogatory nicknames such as “traitor” and “fat Lai”, so the filing called to stop the defamation.
The newspaper’s front-page story did not name Chi-Ying Lai, but merely said that some “disorderly elements” were probing absconding routes and that some “*children” (i.e., young people) were asking for money. However, the accompanying photo shows pictures of Chi-Ying Lai and other “suspects”. In the article, it says, “Chi-Young Lai has repeatedly applied to the court for bail to leave Hong Kong, but was denied.
In an interview with Next Media’s Apple Daily, Lai said that the newspaper could not continue to slander him, or else law enforcement agencies would use the false information as evidence to accuse him of violating Hong Kong’s national security laws. In addition, he is afraid that if he tells too many lies, people will believe him and his reputation will be affected.
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