China is strangling media and political freedom in Hong Kong. The once vibrant international city is now a citadel of Communist Party repression. It’s a place where elementary school students are asked to report one another and from which dissidents are hunted for kidnapping.

This week saw the city take yet another waltz into Communist autocracy. On Thursday, the two senior editors of the now-defunct Stand News outlet were convicted of seditious conspiracy against the Chinese Communist Party.