The editorial author for Hong Kong’s Apple Day by day newspaper has been arrested, the most recent transfer in a media crackdown underneath the nationwide safety legislation that noticed lots of of police raid its newsroom and arrest senior figures final week.
Police confirmed the arrest of a 55-year-old man in Tseung Kwan O on Wednesday morning, “on suspicion of conspiring to collude with overseas nations or overseas forces to hazard nationwide safety”.
He was later recognized by the pro-democracy Apple Day by day as its lead opinion author, who publishes underneath the identify Li Ping.
Li is the primary recognized arrest of a author linked to the police operation launched on Thursday final week. Authorities stated the 5 arrested executives, together with editor-in-chief Ryan Regulation and chief govt Cheung Kim-hung, who have been later charged, have been accountable for greater than 30 articles that known as for overseas sanctions in opposition to the Hong Kong and Chinese language governments.
Police wouldn’t specify which articles have been deemed acts of overseas collusion, however stated some dated again to 2019, nicely earlier than the June 2020 implementation of the legislation, which isn’t presupposed to be retroactive.
Li has written quite a few remark items for Apple Day by day, criticising authorities crackdowns on the pro-democracy motion and the media. After the arrest of Apple Day by day’s founder and proprietor, Jimmy Lai, final 12 months, Li stated Beijing was venting its anger over US sanctions by focusing on Hong Kong media and other people.
In an April column, Li criticised the prosecution of producer Bao Choy at broadcaster RTHK, who had accessed a publicly out there database as a part of her analysis into an notorious assault on protesters in Yuen Lengthy in 2019.
Underneath the headline “Freedom, as soon as an on a regular basis commodity, now a luxurious”, Li accused authorities of looking for to intimidate the press, by “utilizing all types of legislative and judicial means to attempt to silence Hong Kong’s journalists and push media retailers to shut down voluntarily”.
The board of Apple Day by day’s mother or father firm, Subsequent Digital Media, has stated if authorities don’t launch the paper’s funds and accounts, frozen as a part of the operation, they are going to be pressured to close down on Friday. Apple Day by day has already shut down its monetary information and English language companies and its nightly on-line broadcast, and quite a lot of workers have already resigned. Saturday’s paper is anticipated to be its final.