Apple Daily editor-in-chief Ryan Law was escorted by police to a waiting vehicle outside the entrance of Apple Daily newspaper offices in Hong Kong on Thursday. ANTHONY WALLACE / AFP via Getty Images Hide caption
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ANTHONY WALLACE / AFP via Getty Images
Apple Daily editor-in-chief Ryan Law was escorted by police to a waiting vehicle outside the entrance of Apple Daily newspaper offices in Hong Kong on Thursday.
ANTHONY WALLACE / AFP via Getty Images
BEIJING – Hong Kong has arrested five editors-in-chief, including the editor-in-chief of media company Apple Daily, frozen more corporate accounts, and put the future of the region’s feisty investigative newspaper at risk.
Among those arrested were Ryan Law, the editor-in-chief, the CEO of the editor of Cheung Kim-hung, the chief operating officer of the editor Chan Puiman and two other editors. The Apple Daily Livestream showed Law is handcuffed from the newspaper’s offices early Thursday morning.
“You are our top three editorial staff, you just removed our top three editorial staff,” said Mark Simon, a Taiwan-based manager at the publisher of Next Media.
Li Guihua, a senior official with the Hong Kong Special Law Department established to prosecute national security cases, said that the editors were arrested for “dozens of articles in the Apple Daily urging foreign authorities to sanction China or the Hong Kong government”.
About 200 police officers were dispatched to the Apple Daily offices to search the premises and seize “journalistic material”. according to to a statement by the National Security Police.
“There’s a lot of frustration that Apple Daily isn’t going to stop,” said Simon.
The five editors are among the more than 120 arrests below the national security law than Beijing tightens its control over Hong Kong. Jimmy is one of ten of these arrests Lai and nine business partners resulting from their activism. Lai, the founder and editor of Apply Daily, is currently serving imprisonment for separate charges related to organizing protests as part of a Mass demonstration movement in 2019.
As a result, Lai’s shares in Apply Daily publishing company and its associated bank accounts had already been frozen. However, after his arrest last year, the newspaper’s readers rallied, bought more subscriptions and company shares, and temporarily skyrocketed their shares at more than three times the usual price.
But Li, the national security officer, said Thursday the state had frozen the assets of three other companies affiliated with Apple Daily and the publisher. Trading in its shares has been suspended, leaving Apple Daily with limited financial resources.
Simon, the executive of Next Media, said the newspaper will continue reporting and publishing with a skeletal staff.
“Every time they have a plan to kill us, we’ve managed to survive,” says Simon. “This morning our employees told me that until the lights go out, we will keep publishing.”
