The founder of Next Media, Chi-Young Lai, filed a petition with the High Court on the 26th of July, seeking an injunction to prevent the newspaper from defaming him again, as well as damages and an apology. He said that he did not want anyone to use Hong Kong’s National Security Law to frame him with false information about the incident.
According to the filing, the matter in question was a Ta Kung Pao article on June 25 this year, titled “Hong Kong leader plots ‘grass’ route to expose charges of 1 million,” and other graphics, the content of which defamed the plaintiff Chi-Ying Lai, including the fabrication of Lai’s plan to abscond from Hong Kong, damaging his reputation, without verifying the content of the article with Lai 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 “fatty Lai”, so the filing called to stop the defamatory behavior.
The newspaper has a hostile attitude toward him, often calling him a “traitor” and “Fatty Lai” and other insulting and derogatory nicknames to call the plaintiff “Fatty Lai,” so the defamation action was stopped. *The “kids” (i.e., young people) ask for money. However, the accompanying photo shows pictures of Chi-Young Lai and other “suspects”. The real mention of Chi-Young Lai’s name is a report at the bottom of the front page titled “Strange young man ‘safe house’ treads the line”, which states, “Chi-Young Lai, has repeatedly applied to the court for bail to leave Hong Kong, was not granted, Lai evaded criminal responsibility ‘in the grass’. The desire to flee is obvious”.
In an interview with Next Media’s Apple Daily, Chi-Ying Lai pointed out that Ta Kung Pao was talking nonsense and slandering him, and that the newspaper should not be allowed to continue to slander him, otherwise law enforcement agencies will use the false information as “evidence” to accuse him of violating Hong Kong’s national security laws at any time to “screw” him. The situation would be even worse. In addition, he was afraid that if he told too many lies, people would believe him and affect his reputation.
The plaintiff sent a lawyer’s letter to Da Kung Pao on July 3, requesting the other party to retract the defamatory article, promise not to publish similar defamatory content, publish an apology and compensate the plaintiff. It is understood that one of the plaintiff’s second defendants, the editor-in-chief of Ta Kung Pao, Jia Xi Ping, retired in 2017, and therefore did not respond to Chi-Ying Lai’s demand. The data has not been changed since 2009, when Da Kung Pao registered Jia Xiping as editor.
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