Hong Kong’s national security police arrested five executives of the pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper for suspected breaches of the national security law, local news outlets reported Thursday, as the government escalated its campaign against well-known activist and media tycoon Jimmy Lai.
Those arrested included Apple Daily Editor-in-Chief Ryan Law and Next Digital Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Cheung Kim-hung, as hundreds of police officers descended on the newspaper’s Hong Kong headquarters, the South China Morning Post reported. More than 100 officers were sent to Apple Daily’s headquarters, it said.
Lai, who founded Next Digital, has been the most high profile target of the government’s push against democracy advocates in the former British colony and is currently serving more than year in prison for attending unauthorized protests. On Thursday morning, trading of Next Digital shares was halted, without any reason being given.
The government said in a statement that four men and one woman between the ages of 47 and 63 have been arrested “for collusion with a foreign country or with external elements to endanger national security,” without naming the people or the company. A separate statement said police raided “a media company” with a warrant issued under a statute that allows “searching and seizure of journalistic materials.”
The move is the latest effort by Hong Kong and Chinese authorities to quell any form of dissent in the city, which was rocked by sometimes violent anti-China protests in 2019.
In response to the unrest, Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong last year that bars subversion, terrorism, secession and foreign collusion. The government has used the new powers granted under the law to detain dozens of prominent pro-democracy activists, lawyers and politicians, many of whom were denied bail and are now being held in jail before trial on subversion charges for seeking to win a local election and vote down the government’s budget.
“This fits into the pattern over the past year of the government using the national security law to target its top critics,” said Tom Kellogg, the executive director of the Georgetown Center for Asian Law.
“This is a serious blow to press freedom in Hong Kong, and a direct attack on the journalistic work of Apple Daily,” he continued. “Whereas prior attacks on Apple have focused on Jimmy Lai’s own advocacy, these arrests are — for the first time — focused on Apple Daily’s journalistic output.”
Lai, a long-time critic of Beijing, has been one of the government’s most frequent targets. Police had earlier raided Apple Daily’s headquarters back in August, and since then authorities have layered on more national security charges against Lai, who is already serving 20 months in jail after being convicted for protests he attended in 2019.
He’s also been charged with the national security offense of colluding with foreign forces to hurt China based on tweets and interviews Lai gave to international media outlets.
The city’s Security Bureau has moved to freeze some of Lai’s assets and sent letters to some of his bankers, threatening them with years in jail if they deal with any of his accounts in Hong Kong.
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