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.
“Si ambulat loquitur tetrissitatque sicut anas, anas est” is, in customary international law, the three-part test of anatine ambulation, articulation and tetrissitation. And it is essential to Taiwan’s existence. Apocryphally, it can be traced as far back as Suetonius (蘇埃托尼烏斯) in late first-century Rome. Alas, Suetonius was only talking about ducks (anas). But this self-evident principle was codified as a four-part test at the Montevideo Convention in 1934, to which the United States is a party. Article One: “The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: a) a permanent population; b) a defined territory; c) government;
The central bank and the US Department of the Treasury on Friday issued a joint statement that both sides agreed to avoid currency manipulation and the use of exchange rates to gain a competitive advantage, and would only intervene in foreign-exchange markets to combat excess volatility and disorderly movements. The central bank also agreed to disclose its foreign-exchange intervention amounts quarterly rather than every six months, starting from next month. It emphasized that the joint statement is unrelated to tariff negotiations between Taipei and Washington, and that the US never requested the appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar during the
Since leaving office last year, former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has been journeying across continents. Her ability to connect with international audiences and foster goodwill toward her country continues to enhance understanding of Taiwan. It is possible because she can now walk through doors in Europe that are closed to President William Lai (賴清德). Tsai last week gave a speech at the Berlin Freedom Conference, where, standing in front of civil society leaders, human rights advocates and political and business figures, she highlighted Taiwan’s indispensable global role and shared its experience as a model for democratic resilience against cognitive warfare and
The diplomatic spat between China and Japan over comments Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi made on Nov. 7 continues to worsen. Beijing is angry about Takaichi’s remarks that military force used against Taiwan by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” necessitating the involvement of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces. Rather than trying to reduce tensions, Beijing is looking to leverage the situation to its advantage in action and rhetoric. On Saturday last week, four armed China Coast Guard vessels sailed around the Japanese-controlled Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), known to Japan as the Senkakus. On Friday, in what
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