Hong Kong publication Apple Daily printed over 500,000 copies of its Friday paper, over 400,000 more copies than usual, after five of its top editors and executives were arrested on Thursday.
People from around the city lined up to get their hands on a copy of a publication that just had $2.3 million of its assets frozen.
Hundreds of police officers and security agents raided the paper’s offices on Thursday, declaring it a crime scene and arresting the leaders of Apple Daily on suspicion of foreign collusion. It came after the publication printed more than 30 articles that called for international sanctions against China and Hong Kong.
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The collusion offense is related to a Hong Kong “national security” law established by the Chinese government in the summer of 2020, which criminalized acts of secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with foreign forces. As the law was written so vaguely, the residents of Hong Kong have only discovered its true nature and how it will be enforced as more arrests take place.
Ryan Law, the paper’s chief editor, was one of those arrested on Thursday.
“If I am arrested, what should everyone do? Do journalism,” he told Agence France-Presse in May. “Of course, they should continue to do journalism. It’ll be a big news story.”
But despite the writing the wall, ?‘s editor-in-chief Ryan Law only has this to say: keep doing journalism. pic.twitter.com/5vcpxWji3l
— Daniel Suen (@danielchsuen) May 24, 2021
Jimmy Lai, the owner of the company that publishes Apple Daily, was found guilty of unlawful assembly in April in relation to a 2019 protest. He will now have to serve over a year in prison. Lai is likely to face additional charges in relation to the national security law.
In the face of China’s crackdown, Apple Daily has become a rallying point of sorts for the people of Hong Kong.
“There are lots of injustices in Hong Kong already. I think there are a lot of things we cannot do anymore,” one resident said after the Thursday arrests. “Buying a copy is all what we can do. When the law cannot protect Hong Kong people anymore, we are only left to do what we can.”
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In August, when Lai was arrested and the paper’s offices were raided, Apple Daily printed 200,000 more copies of its paper than normal just to keep up with demand. A photo of the night before publication shows Hongkongers lining up in large numbers to buy the paper. The publication typically only prints 86,000 copies.
It’s 2am in #Hongkong. There is a long line of people queuing up for the first batch of @appledaily_hk in Mongkok. We are livestreaming, and 6500 people are watching. I guess no one is getting much sleep tonight. pic.twitter.com/xdfnxdcvLg
— Alex Lam 林偉聰 (@lwcalex) August 10, 2020
“We are deeply concerned by Hong Kong authorities’ selective use of the national security law to arbitrarily target independent media organizations,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said. “As we all know, exchanging views with foreigners in journalism should never be a crime.”
