Exclusive: HK's Apple Daily to shut within days, says Jimmy Lai adviser

Anne Marie Roantree

REUTERS

Sun, June 20, 2021, 

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily will be forced to shut "in a matter of days" after authorities froze the company's assets under a national security law, an adviser to jailed owner Jimmy Lai told Reuters on Monday.

The closure of Apple Daily would undermine the former British colony's reputation as an open and free society and send a warning to other companies that could be accused of colluding with a foreign country, media advocacy groups said.

Next Digital, publisher of the top-selling 26-year-old newspaper, would hold a board meeting on Monday to discuss how to move forward after its lines of credit were frozen, the adviser, Mark Simon, said.

"Vendors tried to put money into our accounts and were rejected," he said by phone from the United States.

"We thought we'd be able to make it to the end of the month. It's just getting harder and harder. It's essentially a matter of days."

Apple Daily said on Sunday the freezing of its assets had left the liberal newspaper with cash for "a few weeks" for normal operations."

Chief Editor Ryan Law, 47, and Chief Executive Cheung Kim-hung, 59, were denied bail on Saturday after being charged with collusion with a foreign country.

Three other executives were also arrested on Thursday when 500 police officers raided the newspaper's offices, drawing condemnation from Western nations, global rights groups and the U.N. spokesperson for human rights.

Those three are still under investigation but were released from police detention.

Hong Kong and Chinese officials said press freedom cannot be used as a "shield" for those who commit crimes, and slammed the criticism as "meddling."

"WE CAN'T BANK"

In May, Reuters reported exclusively that Hong Kong's security chief had sent letters to tycoon Lai and branches of HSBC and Citibank threatening up to seven years' jail for any dealings with the billionaire's accounts in the city.

A Hong Kong-based spokesperson for Citibank said at the time the bank did not comment on individual client accounts. HSBC declined to comment.

Authorities are also prosecuting three companies related to Apple Daily for alleged collusion with a foreign country and have frozen HK$18 million ($2.3 million) of their assets.

Simon told Reuters it had now become impossible to conduct banking operations in the global financial hub.

"We can't bank. Some vendors tried to do that as a favour ... and it was rejected."

The newspaper has come under increasing pressure since owner and Beijing critic Lai, who is now in jail, was arrested under the national security law last August and has since had some of his assets frozen.

Apple Daily plans to ask the government's Security Bureau to unfreeze the assets on Monday and failing that attempt, it may look to challenge the decision in court.

Simon said some reporters had received threatening phone calls from unknown sources.

"Our staff are now just worried about personal safety," he said.

Police have said dozens of Apple Daily articles were suspected of violating the national security law, the first case in which authorities have cited media articles as potentially violating the legislation.

Simon said that based on his understanding from officers' questioning of the executives, around 100 articles were under scrutiny.

"After all this is said and done, the business community is going to look up and recognise that a man's company was gutted and stolen by a communist regime in Hong Kong," he said.

"That's a big deal."

(Reporting by Anne Marie Roantree; additional reporting by James Pomfret and Clare Jim; Editing by Stephen Coates)

We must stand with Hong Kong’s embattled journalists
Johnny Patterson
Sun, June 20, 2021

People queue up to buy the Apple Daily newspaper in Hong Kong (AP)

First, they came for the protestors, then they came for the elected democrats, and now it is the turn of journalists. Step by step, the long arm of the national security law is suffocating free expression in Hong Kong.

Having rounded up and imprisoned a number of opposition politicians under “subversion” charges, this week the Chinese Communist Party turned its attention to Hong Kong’s free media – sending 500 national security officers to arrest the editor-in-chief and four other directors from the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, on the basis that they have “colluded with foreign political forces” by publishing articles critical of the state.

This is another milestone moment in a dark year for Hong Kong. However, it is not to say that the pro-democracy press has been immune from political pressure in the past. Jimmy Lai, the owner of Apple Daily, is already facing a National Security Law charge of his own, and the newspaper has been under an advertising embargo from most major Hong Kong businesses for more than a decade. But journalists have never been targeted under the National Security Law and their words have never before been criminalised in this way.


The contrast with events two years ago could not be starker. On 16 June 2019, up to 2 million people marched the streets of Hong Kong. In a city of 7.5 million, that is extraordinary. Slogans such as “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times” and “Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong” rang from the rooftops and alleyways. The overwhelming cry of Hong Kong’s people was that they would stand up for their freedoms.

It was a message of defiance which Beijing found unacceptable and catalysed the current purge. China’s national security law has transformed Hong Kong by giving the government a piece of legislation which overrides all locally enshrined human rights safeguards and is so broadly defined that it can be applied to pretty much anyone in opposition.

When the law was introduced by Carrie Lam, she claimed that it would only target a “very small minority” of extreme lawbreakers. With newspaper editors following democratically-elected legislators into the dock, the mendacity of her claim is now evident. The legislation is being used to propel the city to full-blown totalitarianism.

Weeks before the protest movement broke out, I visited Hong Kong. Half of the 30 or so people I spoke with on that trip are now jailed. Most of them were either activists or legislators at the time. Their backgrounds? Lawyers, pilots, accountants, students. Idealists who just wanted to live in a free, just society.

Many of them are being denied bail as they await trial, and some have even been held in solitary confinement.

Each of those hundreds of imprisoned protesters are individuals – some of whom I am privileged to call friends – whose future looks bleak. With many of the national security law cases being escalated to the High Court, some of Hong Kong’s leading democrats now face a minimum of 10 years in jail. Their crimes? Writing news editorials or standing in primary elections. It is appallingly unjust.

Why should the suffocation of Hong Kong’s freedoms matter to us? Three reasons. First, because the UK and China signed a treaty in international law to protect Hong Kong’s freedoms. The British government has stated that Beijing is in permanent breach of the handover treaty. We have a duty to make sure that no political prisoner is forgotten, and should look to take further steps to show that there are consequences for this treaty breach, including the use of Magnitsky sanctions.

Equally importantly, every step to suffocate Hong Kong’s freedoms will convince British National Overseas passport holders – who now have the right to live in the UK – that their future might not be in Hong Kong. The government must put proper resources and preparation into the welcome package in anticipation of new arrivals.

Finally, as we watch our friends in Hong Kong see their freedoms unpicked piece by piece, it is a reminder of the value of what we take for granted.

In a statement earlier this week, Apple Daily’s journalists stood defiant: “We will continue to persist as Hongkongers and live up to the expectations so that we have no regrets to our readers and the times we are in. Though we are facing a sweeping clampdown on our publication, the staff of Apple Daily will hold fast to our duties faithfully and press on till the end to see the arrival of dawn.” We should stand with them.

Johnny Patterson is the policy director of Hong Kong Watch

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