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Hong Kong’s national security police have arrested the editor-in-chief and four other directors of the Apple Daily newspaper in early morning raids involving Five hundreds of officers, over their role in the publication of dozens of articles alleged to be part of a conspiracy to collude with foreign forces. Apple Daily said Thursday that the company's CEO Cheung Kim Hung, COO Chow Tat Kuen and chief editor Ryan Law, along with the deputy chief editor and online editor were all arrested and accused of colluding with foreign forces to endanger national security — a provision of the sweeping legislation introduced last year that banned sedition, secession and subversion against Beijing.

Ryan Law Apple Daily’s editor-in-chief

The city’s security chief, John Lee, accused those arrested of using “journalistic work as a tool to endanger national security”, and issued a chilling warning to residents and other media.“Normal journalists are different from these people,” Lee said. “Please keep a distance from them.”

The police force’s national security department said the five had been arrested on suspicion of collusion with a foreign country or with external elements to endanger national security, through articles which police said called for sanctions to be imposed on Hong Kong and mainland China. All were arrested at their homes, at around 7am.

Police also searched Apple Daily’s newsroom and its offices, saying the warrant covered “the power of searching and seizure of journalistic materials”. “The operation, still ongoing, aims at gathering evidence for a case of suspected contravention of the national security law,” it said.

Those arrested were named by Apple Daily as editor-in-chief, Ryan Law; the chief executive officer, Cheung Kim-hung; the chief operating officer, Chow Tat-kuen; the deputy chief editor, Chan Puiman; and the chief executive editor, Cheung Chi-wai.


Senior superintendent Steve Li, of the police's national security department said, Police also froze HK$18m (US $2.3m) in assets of three companies, Apple Daily Limited, Apple Daily Printing Limited and AD Internet Limited. Parent company, Next Digital announced the suspension of trading in its shares before markets opened on Thursday. The publication live-streamed the early morning raid on its Facebook page, showing police asking staff to show proof of identity, and blocking them from returning to their desks. The Hong Kong government confirmed Thursday that it had arrested five "directors of a company" on suspicion of violating the national security law and that officers had obtained a search warrant which gave officers the power to seize journalist material.

The UK foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, on Thursday said the raid showed authorities were using the law to target dissent rather than tackle public security. “Freedom of the press is one of the rights China promised to protect in the joint declaration [between the UK and China on Hong Kong governance] and should be respected,” he said. Lai is among the most high-profile of those arrested under the law. He was charged a third time under the law in April, accused of foreign collusion in relation to activist Andy Li’s attempt to flee to Taiwan by boat last year. His assets were also frozen.

Lai has been a vocal opponent of the crackdown on the pro-democracy movement, and Apple Daily has produced extensive critical journalism. Hong Kong’s police commissioner has accused Apple Daily of creating hatred and dividing society, while pro-Beijing media has called for it to be shut down. Thursday marked the second raid on its newsroom. Earlier this month, Law told Agence France-Presse he was facing “the greatest crisis since I took up the post over three years ago”. The raids were condemned by journalism and human rights groups. Steven Butler, Asia program coordinator of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said the arrests destroyed “any remaining fiction that Hong Kong supports freedom of the press”.
“China, which controls Hong Kong, may be able to eliminate the paper, which it sees as an annoying critic, but only at a steep price to be paid by the people of Hong Kong, who had enjoyed decades of free access to information.” Taiwan’s foreign minister, Joseph Wu, said he was “out of words to describe my anger and sadness”. “Authoritarianism is waging a brutal war on Apple Daily, a desperately endangered symbol of freedom in Hong Kong.”

After the initial raid, Li said Apple Daily's headquarters was now a crime scene, and that officers had confiscated electronic devices, such as mobile phones, computers and laptops. In images published online by Apple Daily, police officers could be seen examining computers at the office.He said police were investigating Apple Daily for its earlier attempts to "colluding with foreign forces and external elements to endanger national security." Li said that since 2019 Apple Daily had published articles calling on foreign countries to sanction the Chinese and Hong Kong governments. Last year, the deputy director of the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of the State Council said the national security law, which came into effect on June 30, would not be retroactive.

Li also urged the public not to repost the content. "If you have no real reason to share these types of articles, I would advise everyone not to," Li warned.
"The government is raiding Apple Daily because they can't shut it down by economic pressure," Mark Simon, managing director of the private holdings of newspaper's controversial founder Jimmy Lai, told CNN Business. "So that means we have 130 cops in our newsroom vacuuming up documents."

The arrests and probe are the latest step in an escalating crackdown against the provocative, anti-Beijing tabloid, which has become the poster child in Hong Kong for media freedom in what many analysts argue is an increasingly hostile landscape for the industry. Media mogul Lai — who for decades has been a symbol of the city's tensions with mainland China — already faces charges under the national security law and is currently serving jail sentences for his role in unauthorized assemblies dating from the 2019 pro-democracy protests.

Li said that Thursday's operation was not targeting the press, but one individual organization that violated the national security law, saying the Hong Kong government values press freedom.Carrie Lam, the city's leader, said after the passage of the Beijing-imposed national security law that Hong Kong people should still be able to enjoy freedom of speech and press.
Lee, the security secretary, sought to quell concerns about press freedoms in the city on Thursday, saying that the probe was targeted at actions that were "not normal journalistic work. "Please understand that our actions are not targeting journalistic work," he added. 'We target perpetrators who use journalistic work as a tool to endanger acts of national security."
Press freedoms are a fundamental right guaranteed by Hong Kong's Basic Law, the city's mini-constitution. But experts have worried about the usage of the national security law, and there have been indications of pressures on other media in the city. Earlier this year, a freelance producer working with public broadcaster Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) was convicted and fined for violating a traffic ordinance — a convoluted charge connected to her reporting on a pivotal event during the height of the 2019 protests.
A recent ranking of worldwide press freedoms, meanwhile, indicates that the environment in Hong Kong has deteriorated. The international watchdog Reporters Without Borders — which qualifies such freedoms based on data on abuse and acts of violence against journalists along with a questionnaire to experts — ranked Hong Kong 80 out of 180 countries for press freedom, down from 18 out of 138 in 2002.