Police arrest Apple editors daily under Hong Kong security law: NPR

BEIJING – Hong Kong police have arrested five editorial executives, including the editor-in-chief of media outlet Apple Daily, froze more corporate accounts, and endangered the future of the region’s most controversial investigative newspaper.

Those arrested included Ryan Lu, editor-in-chief, executive director of newspaper publisher Cheung Kim Hong, chief operating officer of publisher Chan Boyman, and other editors. Apple Daily Live Stream show up Law walked out of the newspaper’s offices handcuffed early Thursday morning.

They’re our top three editors, they just stripped our top three editors,” Mark Simon, a Taiwan executive with publisher Next Media, told the paper.

Lee Gui Hwa, a senior official in Hong Kong’s own legal body set up to prosecute national security issues, He said The editors were arrested for “dozens of articles in the Apple Daily that called on foreign agencies to impose sanctions on China or the Hong Kong government.”

About 200 police officers were sent to the Apple Daily offices to search buildings and seize “press materials,” according to To the National Security Police statement.

“There is a huge frustration that Apple Daily is not going to stop,” Simon said.

The five editors are among more than 120 or so arrests made National Security Law like Beijing tighten control of Hong Kong. Ten of those arrests involve Jimmy Lai and nine business partners, stems from their activism. Lay, founder and publisher of Apple Daily, is Currently serving Imprisonment for separate charges related to organizing protests as part of 2019 mass demonstrations

As a result, Lay’s shares in the publishing company of Applay Daily and his related corporate bank accounts have already been frozen. However, after his arrest last year, readers of the newspaper rallied, buying more subscriptions and shares of the company, causing its shares to rise briefly. Three times the usual price.

But Lee, the national security officer, said Thursday that the state had frozen the assets of three other Apple Daily companies and those of its publisher. Its shares have been suspended, leaving little financial resources for Apple Daily.

Simon, CEO of Next Media, said the newspaper will continue to work on reporting and publishing with a skeleton staff.

“Every time they come up with a plan to kill us, we’ve managed to survive,” Simon says. “This morning, our staff told me, until the lights go out, we will continue posting.”