Friday is crunch time for HK's Apple Daily

HONG KONG • The pro-democracy Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily looks set to close for good by Saturday, following police raids and the arrest of executives.

Mr Mark Simon, an adviser to the tabloid's jailed owner and staunch Beijing critic Jimmy Lai yesterday said Apple Daily would be forced to shut "in a matter of days".

Apple Daily said in an internal memo to staff: "The board will decide on Friday whether (the company) will continue to operate.

"If the board decides not to continue to operate on Friday, online will stop uploading at 23.59pm on the day, newspaper will cease operation after publishing the June 26 edition."

Apple Daily and Next Digital management could not be reached for comment.

Owned by Lai's Next Digital, Apple Daily is a popular tabloid founded 26 years ago that mixes pro-democracy discourse with celebrity gossip and investigations of those in power. It has been a strong critic of the Hong Kong and Beijing governments.

Police raided the newspaper last week in a national security investigation in which senior Apple Daily executives were arrested for alleged "collusion with a foreign country" and assets of three companies linked to the newspaper were frozen.

Hong Kong media reported last yesterday that Apple Daily and its online edition would cease operations by tomorrow as most of its employees had resigned.

Apple's looming demise follows the imposition of a national security law on Hong Kong last year in response to mass pro-democracy protests in 2019.

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

Editor-in-chief Ryan Law and chief executive officer Cheung Kim-hung were charged with collusion with a foreign country and denied bail last Saturday. Three other senior executives were also arrested last Thursday and released pending further investigation.

Three firms linked to Apple Daily are being prosecuted for collusion with a foreign country and the authorities have frozen HK$18 million (S$3.1 million) of their assets.

The firm said in the memo that the board had sent a letter to Hong Kong's Security Bureau to ask that some assets be unfrozen in order for it to avoid violating labour laws by failing to pay staff.

The bureau yesterday said it would not comment on case details due to ongoing legal proceedings and that any application related to the frozen property would be handled "according to the law".

"Endangering national security is a very serious crime," it said.

The newspaper said in a Sunday article that it was considering challenging the decision to freeze its assets in courts, should the Security Bureau reject the request.

The office of the city's Chief Executive as well as Beijing's chief representative in the city, the Liaison Office, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The arrests and scale of the Apple Daily raid have been widely criticised by Western countries, global rights groups, press associations and the chief UN spokesman for human rights.

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

Next Digital has come under increasing pressure since Lai was arrested last year under the legislation. Lai, whose assets have also been frozen under the security law, is in jail for taking part in unauthorised assemblies.

REUTERS