Hong Kong’s Apple Daily yesterday said that its board would decide whether to close the publication at their next meeting on Friday, after an asset freeze by authorities using the National Security Law left the outspoken media group unable to pay its employees.
Apple Daily has long been a thorn in Beijing’s side, with unapologetic support for the territory’s democracy movement and caustic criticism of China’s authoritarian leaders.
Its owner Jimmy Lai (黎智英) is in jail and was among the first to be charged under the security law after its imposition by Beijing last year. Its chief editor and chief executive were detained last week and its finances frozen under the legislation, which Beijing has used to stamp out dissent in Hong Kong.
Photo: AP
The remaining board members met yesterday to discuss the newspaper’s future.
“The board ... decided to meet again on Friday to decide whether to terminate Apple Daily,” the paper said in a short push notification to readers.
The newspaper’s closure would shutter one of the few remaining Hong Kong dailies willing to be critical of China’s authoritarian leaders. It would also be a huge victory for the authorities, who have made no secret of their desire to see the outlet silenced.
In an interview with CNN, Mark Simon, a senior aide to Lai, said that last week’s freeze order had crippled the newspaper’s ability to do business.
“Our problem at Apple Daily is not that we don’t have funds, we have US$50 million in the bank,” Simon said. “Our problem is the secretary of security and the police will not let us pay our reporters, they will not let us pay our staff and they will not let us pay our vendors. They have locked up our accounts.”
Lai, 73, is in prison for attending democracy protests in 2019. He faces a life sentence if convicted of national security crimes.
More than 500 police officers on Thursday last week raided the paper’s newsroom and arrested five executives over a series of articles that police said called for international sanctions.
Two of those executives — editor-in-chief Ryan Law (羅偉光) and Next Digital Ltd (壹傳媒) chief executive officer and Apple Daily publisher Cheung Kim-hung (張劍虹) — have been charged with “colluding” with foreign forces to undermine China’s national security and were remanded into custody at the weekend.
Lai’s personal assets in Hong Kong and his media company shares were frozen last month. Hong Kong Secretary for Security John Lee (李家超) on Thursday last week said that a further HK$18 million (US$2.3 million) of company assets had been blocked.
“These are all orders from basically the secretary of security. We are facing a security agency, we are not facing courts,” Simon told CNN.
Simon is himself wanted by Hong Kong police on national security charges, but left the territory last year and has since relocated to the US.
Apple Daily said that it was planning to ask Lee to unfreeze some money so it can pay 700 employees. If the application is unsuccessful, the paper said it planned to go to court.
The Hong Kong Security Bureau declined to comment on whether it had been contacted by the newspaper, citing ongoing legal proceedings.
“Endangering national security is a very serious crime,” a bureau spokesperson said. “We handle such crimes according to the law.”
LAND ALERT UNCERTAIN: The CWB was waiting to observe how In-Fa shifts as it moves north to determine when to issue a land alert, a forecaster at the bureau said Residents of northern Taiwan should brace for heavy rain today and tomorrow as Typhoon In-Fa approaches the northeast, the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) said yesterday. A land alert for the typhoon would be issued depending on the angle at which it moves north today, the bureau said. The bureau on Wednesday issued a sea alert for the typhoon, which applies to ships operating off the nation’s northern, northeastern and southeastern coasts. As of 8:30pm yesterday, In-Fa’s center was 470km southeast of Taipei, moving northwest at 6kph. It was carrying maximum sustained winds of 180kph, and had a radius of 200km. The typhoon was moving
TARGET RAISED: The CECC said vaccination coverage has reached 24.35%, while Premier Su Tseng-chang said the government hopes for 30% by the end of July The government has signed a contract to buy an additional 36 million doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, 1 million of which are to be delivered in the fourth quarter, the Executive Yuan announced yesterday, as it updated its vaccination target to 30 percent coverage by the end of the month. The two-year deal with the US company covers “prime series” vaccines and future booster shots to protect against SARS-CoV-2 variants, Executive Yuan spokesman Lo Ping-cheng (羅秉成) quoted Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) as saying during an Executive Yuan meeting in Taipei. In the two weeks since vaccine registration opened, more than 9.8
NEXT ROUND: About 1.44 million people who have registered online to receive the AstraZeneca vaccine are to get text messages today to book a vaccine appointment Strict border control measures, including a ban on foreign nationals entering or transiting through Taiwan, are to continue, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday, as it reported 10 locally transmitted COVID-19 infections and no deaths. Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center, said five of the cases tested positive during isolation or upon ending it. The sources of infection of eight cases have been identified, one remains unclear and one is under investigation, he said, adding that 87.8 percent of the people infected with COVID-19 since May 11 have been released from isolation. Chen said an
BREAKING RECORDS: Kuo Hsing-chun’s snatch, clean and jerk, and combined lifts were all Olympic records, although well off her combined world record Taiwanese weightlifter Kuo Hsing-chun (郭婞淳) yesterday completed her elusive quest for Olympic gold, clinching Taiwan’s first win at the Tokyo Games as she set Olympic records in the women’s under-59kg weight class. Kuo, who has not lost a major competition in her weight class since the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, where she was hampered by injury and finished third, finally chased down the gold medal that had long remained just out of her grasp. The 27-year-old finished with a combined lift of 236kg — 103kg in the snatch and 133kg in the clean and jerk — 21kg more
RSS