5 media execs arrested under security law

Hong Kong police arrested five executives of Apple Daily on Thursday morning on suspicion of breaching the National Security Law for Hong Kong, and searched the local tabloid’s headquarters.

Newspaper Editor-in-Chief Ryan Law and CEO Cheung Kim-hung were among the four men and a woman detained “for collusion with a foreign country or with external elements to endanger national security”. Searches were also conducted at the suspects’ respective residences.

In a press briefing in the afternoon, Secretary for Security John Lee Ka-chiu said the arrests were based on strong evidence that the suspects conspired through publications to invite foreign sanctions and hostile activities against Hong Kong and the country.

The arrests have nothing to do with normal media activities, he said, adding that police target only those who use journalism as a cover for their acts to endanger national security.

Anyone who endangers national security in the name of news activities will be dealt with in accordance with the law, he said.

At a separate media briefing, Steve Li Kwai-wah, senior superintendent of the police force’s National Security Department, said the arrestees play an important role in the operation of the tabloid and are fully responsible for the content it publishes.

He also said that the city’s Security Bureau froze assets worth HK$18 million ($2.3 million) of three companies linked to the newspaper — Apple Daily, Apple Daily Printing, and AD Internet.

Li said that since 2019, Apple Daily has published dozens of reports in Chinese and English, both online and offline, calling for foreign sanctions on the governments of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and the country.

The owner of the tabloid — media tycoon Jimmy Lai Chee-ying — is serving prison sentences for organizing and participating in illegal assemblies during the social unrest in 2019.

Following the arrests, the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region said no one should challenge the authority of the National Security Law. No one is above the law, the office said in a statement.

The rights to freedom of speech and press enshrined in the Basic Law are not absolute, the office said. It is in line with universal principles and the legal norms in all countries that citizens should not cross the red line of national security while exercising these rights, it said.

Anyone who violates the National Security Law should expect to face the full force of the law, regardless of their profession or the powers behind them, the office stressed.

The office expressed support for the special administrative region government and police in enforcing the law, safeguarding national security, and maintaining Hong Kong’s stability and prosperity.

In a separate statement, the Office for Safeguarding National Security of the Central People’s Government in the HKSAR expressed a similar sentiment, saying that it firmly supports the police’s law enforcement action against the suspects.