Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief Emma Tucker said in a letter to staff that the shift would also involve an unspecified number of layoffs. File picture
| Photo Credit: X/@emmatuckerWSJ

The Wall Street Journal(WSJ) will shift its Asia headquarters from Hong Kong to Singapore, it said on May 2 in a letter sent to staff and seen by AFP.

The U.S. newspaper said its decision comes after other foreign firms have reconsidered their operations in Chinese financial hub Hong Kong.

WSJ editor-in-chief Emma Tucker said in a letter to staff that the shift would also involve an unspecified number of layoffs.

On the staff changes, she added: “Consequently, some of our colleagues, mostly in Hong Kong, will be leaving us. It is difficult to say goodbye, and I want to thank them for the contributions they have made to the Journal.”

The union for WSJ employees, IAPE, said in a statement that it was “sorry to learn that eight reporters from the Hong Kong and Singapore offices have been laid off from the company.”

Elsewhere in the region, the WSJ also has bureaus in Tokyo, New Delhi, Beijing, Seoul, Taiwan and Sydney.

Ms. Tucker said a new business, finance and economics group would be created with a mandate to “break news and write ambitious and distinctive features, analysis and enterprise.”

She also said the WSJ was looking to appoint an editor to lead the group, with the position based in Singapore, alongside a number of other journalist roles in Singapore and Hong Kong.

Ms. Tucker was named the first female editor of the New York-based newspaper in December 2022, starting in the role in February 2023.

Hong Kong authorities this year introduced a new national security law, with critics saying it expanded the city’s powers to prosecute dissidents, and that it was scaring foreign businesses away.

The new law expands on a national security law implemented by China in 2020 to quell the huge and sometimes violent pro-democracy protests that swept Hong Kong the year before.

More than 290 people have been arrested, 174 charged and 114 convicted — most of them prominent pro-democracy politicians, activists, and journalists — since Beijing’s security law was enacted.

U.S. news outlet Radio Free Asia announced in March it had closed its Hong Kong office, citing concerns about staff safety, while media watchdog Reporters Without Borders said in April a representative was denied entry into the city.

Hong Kong was once home to a thriving independent media environment.

Authorities have since closed several local media outlets, including Stand News and Apple Daily.

The imposition of severe restrictions on independent media by governments has become “a recurring feature of the continuing crisis of democracy in South Asia”, prominent academicians, journalists and activists from the region have noted, calling for a collective response from South Asia.

“The unending assault on free expression and democratic rights in South Asia is no longer a country-specific development. Neither is it confined to specific nation states. Rather it is a regional phenomenon, signalling a new and worsening phase of democratic backsliding in South Asia,” they said in a statement issued on Tuesday.

Among the signatories to the statement are Jayadeva Uyangoda, senior political scientist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Colombo, and several other academics from University of Jaffna and the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka; M.A. Sumanthiran, senior lawyer and Member of Parliament, Sri Lanka; Radhika Coomaraswamy, Fellow, International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Colombo; Kanak Dixit, Founder, Himal Southasian, Kathmandu; Roman Gautam, Editor, Himal Southasian, Kathmandu; Nalaka Gunawardena, media analyst, Colombo; Sakuntala Kadirgamar, Executive Director, Law and Society Trust, Colombo; and P. Saravanamuttu, Executive Director, Centre for Policy Alternatives, Colombo.

“The recent raids by the Delhi Police on 46 houses of journalists connected with the Indian news portal NewsClick illustrates this shocking trend. More unsettling is the arrest of Prabir Purkayastha, its Editor-in-Chief, and Amith Chakravorty, its Head of Human Resources, on the pretext of investigating them for a “terror case with Chinese links,” their statement said.

“We join the progressive media, civil society organisations and activists in India to condemn in no uncertain terms this brazen attack by the government on the free media. Harassment and intimidation of the independent media by the misuse of the police and state agencies for narrow political gains is part of a growing trend in a country claimed to be the ‘Mother of Democracy.’ Many commentators have likened this trend to the stifling times of the Emergency in India during the 1970s, although a State of Emergency has not been formally declared now,” the public intellectuals noted.

Pointing to cases of harassment targeting journalists and activists in Bangladesh, they said: “We particularly take note of the recent jailing of Adilur Rahman Khan and Nasiruddin Elan, two leading human rights campaigners attached to Odhikar, Bangladesh, a leading human rights documentation and reporting centre.” Further, they pointed to the ‘Online Safety Bill’ in Sri Lanka, a proposed legislation that, they said, provides a “draconian legal framework” to potentially stifle dissent and free expression.

“Such moves have a chilling effect on journalists and rights defenders, inhibiting them from speaking truth to power,” the signatories noted with concern.

The latest developments in Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka ring “an alarm bell for all of us in South Asia”, they observed.

“In their decided attempts to target journalists, or to harass or silence other dissenting voices, our governments have begun to employ the new tactic of portraying journalists and citizen-activists who dare to expose the misdeeds of those in power as “anti-national” and threats to national security. By denying the citizens the democratic space for critical questioning, dissent and debate, and deploying the coercive power of the state in full force against the media and the media professionals, our governments seem to show how impatient they are to drag our countries into a new phase of authoritarian decay. This indeed is bad political news for the whole of South Asia,” the statement said.

Therefore, struggles for media freedom in India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka or elsewhere in the region are to be viewed as “integral to the struggle for democracy in South Asia as a whole”, the signatories contended.

“Amid the heightening attacks on free media and the right to free expression, we must respond collectively as South Asians. We must resist tyranny in all forms, and fight to restore and strengthen our fundamental rights and democratic freedoms. We must resolve to look out for each other, assert our rights, and defend our freedoms within and beyond our individual nation-states,” they said, demanding the immediate release of Prabir Purkayastha and Amith Chakravorty of NewsClick, and Adilur Rahman Khan and Nasiruddin Elan of Odhikar.

“We also urge all South Asians concerned with media freedom, human rights, and rule of law to campaign together to defend democracy in the region through solidarity and joint action beyond the nation-state boundaries,” they said.