Dui Hua says it has cut off all contact with SCMP over editor’s ‘sexist and racist attacks’

The influential human rights group says an apology is needed before it will grant interviews to the paper’s reporters again

The Dui Hua Foundation, an influential human rights organization based in the United States, has announced that it is cutting off all contact with the South China Morning Post over “sexist and racist attacks” made by one of the paper’s editors

In a post published on the NGO’s website on Monday, Dui Hua accused Yonden Lhatoo, SCMP’s chief news editor, of “vicious personal attacks” against Angela Gui, daughter of Gui Minhai, a Hong Kong bookseller and Swedish citizen who was recently disappeared back into Chinese custody.

In an opinion piece (which Dui Hua calls an “ill-tempered and sexist rant”), titled “Before you cry ‘fake news’ make sure you’re not a fake yourself,” published on January 27th, Lhatoo attacks Angela for calling SCMP, the “latest purveyor of fake news” over a report she disputed regarding her father.

“Let’s just take a step back here to grasp the irony of it all,” Lhatoo writes.

“This 115-year-old media institution is being accused of purveying fake news by a woman whose one and only claim to fame is that she is the daughter of a man whose only claim to fame is getting into trouble for — this is rich — peddling fake news.”

In its post, Dui Hua listed 23-year-old Angela’s many academic honors before also pointing to another controversial piece written by Lhatoo in December about the suicide of Korean pop star Jonghyun, in which he wrote that “all of South Korea’s prettiest and shiniest humanoid cultural exports look and sound exactly the same. I can’t tell them apart.”

Dui Hua says that it will no longer have anything to do with the SCMP —refusing to make comments or give interviews to the paper’s reporters — until Lhatoo “apologizes to the victims of his sexist and racist attacks.”

Btw, here are a few more provocative headlines from Lhatoo: “Has Britain really become a completely useless country?” “Don’t just blame youth, elderly people can be far worse” and “The Nobel Peace Prize was always a joke; now it’s a total circus”

This bit of bad press comes just as Hong Kong’s paper of record has announced a major makeover, unveiling a new look, identity, and branding, not to mention flashy new office spaces and a new corporate logo.