Hong Kong pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily on Wednesday announced that it was shutting down, saying the decision was made “in view of staff members’ safety” after a raid by police last week.
The development is the latest in a series of crackdowns by Beijing on freedom of speech in Hong Kong.
Police on June 4 cordoned off a park normally used for commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre and arrested the organizer of an annual vigil for Chinese students killed on that day.
Reuters reported that vigils went ahead across the territory in churches and at private residences. People in the US consulate and EU offices could be seen lighting candles in front of their windows, and jailed democracy advocate Jimmy Sham (岑子傑) wrote on Facebook that he planned to “light a cigarette at 8pm.”
The show of defiance was proof that Beijing had not accomplished its goal of scaring Hong Kongers into compliance, and neither has it accomplished its aim of erasing Hong Kongers’ memories of certain events or their access to the facts surrounding them — an aim that was evident in the use of Internet censorship following protests last year.
China’s efforts to achieve that aim are only serving to alienate Hong Kongers, as well as Taiwanese.
Reuters on Jan. 15 reported that Internet service provider Hong Kong Broadband Network said that it would block any content that it deemed to be inciting acts that contravene the National Security Law. One of the sites reportedly blocked by the company was HKChronicles, which provides information about protests in the territory.
The Nintendo Switch game Animal Crossing was banned in China in April last year after Hong Kong democracy advocates staged virtual protests in the game. It is likely that the game — and possibly Nintendo’s online service — will also be banned in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong politician and data specialist Wong Ho-wa (黃浩華) told Reuters that he was “deeply worried that Hong Kongers’ freedom to access information on the Internet was starting to be affected.”
The open government data community g0vhk, founded by Wong, has also been taken offline.
Meanwhile, the closure of the Hong Kong and Macau representative offices in Taipei, as well as the refusal by the Hong Kong government to renew Taiwanese officials’ visas, has exacerbated the alienation Taiwanese have felt about the crackdown in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong previously served as a bridge between Taiwan and China, and Beijing’s decision to destroy that bridge by suppressing Hong Kongers’ rights and cutting off official ties will ultimately only hurt China.
A lack of access to information in China means that Chinese often have a different understanding or lack of knowledge of certain issues, which affects communications with the international community.
Hong Kongers and Taiwanese have long enjoyed a favorable relationship purely because free access to information in Hong Kong had allowed people there to understand Taiwan’s precarious situation and formulate their own opinion on the issue of its sovereignty. If that information is taken away, Hong Kongers in a generation or two would not understand Taiwan’s situation, meaning that nobody in China would be capable of speaking with Taiwanese on equal terms.
It is unlikely that China will pay any heed to calls from Taipei to protect Hong Kong’s freedoms, but the government should at least try to convey to Beijing that by limiting Hong Kongers’ access to information, it is burning a bridge to Taiwan and the rest of the world.
If Beijing were smart, it would allow Hong Kong to become a model for reform in China, rather than force its restrictions on the territory.
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