Skip to content

Hong Kong’s Apple Daily Vows to Fight On After Owner Arrested

  • Asia

French Privacy Watchdog Opens Preliminary Investigation Into TikTok

PARIS—France’s data privacy watchdog CNIL said on Tuesday that it has opened a preliminary investigation into Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok after it received a complaint. TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, is already under investigation over privacy concerns by U.S., European Union and Dutch authorities. “A complaint about TikTok was received in May. This complaint is now under investigation,” a CNIL spokesman said, confirming a Bloomberg report. He declined to elaborate on the nature of the complaint or the identity of the plaintiff. In the United States, officials have said that TikTok poses a national security risk because of the personal data it handles. President Donald Trump has threatened to ban TikTok and has given ByteDance 45 days to negotiate a sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations to Microsoft. In June, the…

Hong Kong’s Apple Daily Vows to Fight On After Owner Arrested

HONG KONG—Hong Kong’s Apple Daily tabloid responded with defiance on Tuesday to the arrest of owner Jimmy Lai under a new national security law imposed by Beijing, promising to fight on in a front-page headline over an image of Lai in handcuffs.

Readers stood in line from the early hours to get copies of the pro-democracy tabloid a day after police raided its offices and took Lai into detention, the highest-profile arrest under the national security law.

“Apple Daily must fight on,” the front-page headline read, amid fears the new law erodes media freedoms in the semi-autonomous territory.

“The prayers and encouragement of many readers and writers make us believe that as long as there are readers, there will be writers, and that Apple Daily shall certainly fight on.”

More than 500,000 copies were printed, compared with the usual 100,000, the paper said on its website.

Mainland-born Lai, who was smuggled into Hong Kong on a fishing boat when he was a penniless 12-year-old, is one of the most prominent democracy activists in the Chinese-ruled city and an ardent critic of Communist Party rule in Beijing.

His arrest comes amid a crackdown on the pro-democracy opposition in Hong Kong that has drawn international criticism and raised fears for the freedoms promised by Beijing when the former British colony returned to China in 1997.

Hong Kong’s Apple Daily Vows to Fight On After Owner Arrested Media mogul Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, founder of Apple Daily, is detained by the national security unit in Hong Kong on Aug. 10, 2020. (Tyrone Siu TPX Images of the day/Reuters)

The sweeping security law imposed on June 30 punishes anything China considers secession, subversion, terrorism, or collusion with foreign forces with up to life in prison.

The city’s Beijing-backed government and Chinese authorities say the law is necessary to restore order after months of protests last year, sparked by fears China was slowly eroding the city’s freedoms.

Hong Kong has since become another source of contention between the United States and China, whose relations were already at their most strained in years over issues including trade, the novel coronavirus, China’s treatment of its Uyghur Muslim minority, and its claims in the South China Sea.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday called Lai a “patriot” saying Beijing had “eviscerated” Hong Kong’s freedoms.

Hong Kong’s Apple Daily Vows to Fight On After Owner Arrested U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks during a joint press conference with Britain’s Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab at Lancaster House in London on July 21, 2020. (Hannah McKay-WPA Pool/Getty Images)

Britain said Lai’s arrest was further evidence the security law was a “pretext to silence opposition,” to which China’s embassy replied by urging London to stop “using freedom of the press as an excuse to discredit” the law.

‘Dancing With the Enemy’

Police detained Lai for suspected collusion with foreign forces after about 200 officers searched the newspaper’s offices, collecting 25 boxes of evidence.

Handcuffed and apparently wearing the same clothes after spending the night in jail, he was driven by police on Tuesday to his yacht which police searched, according to media footage.

Beijing has labeled Lai a “traitor” in the past and issued a statement supporting his arrest.

The Beijing-backed China Daily newspaper said in an editorial Lai’s arrest showed “the cost of dancing with the enemy.” The paper added that “justice delayed didn’t mean the absence of justice.”

Hong Kong’s Apple Daily Vows to Fight On After Owner Arrested (L-R) Ivan Lam, Joshua Wong, and Agnes Chow speak to reporters after appearing in court in Hong Kong on July 6, 2020. (Song Bilung/The Epoch Times)

Police arrested 10 people in all on Monday, including other Apple Daily executives and 23-year-old Agnes Chow, one of the former leaders of young activist Joshua Wong’s Demosisto pro-democracy group, which disbanded before the new law came into force.

Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement has managed to sustain broad support across the community.

Shares in Next Digital, which publishes Apple Daily, surged for a second day, gaining more than 2,078 percent from Friday’s close, after online pro-democracy forums called on investors to show support.

Its market value rose as high as HK$5.17 billion ($666.7 million) from some HK$200 million.

In the working-class neighborhood of Mong Kok, dozens of people stood in line from as early as 2 a.m. to buy Lai’s paper.

“What the police did yesterday interfered with press freedom brutally,” said 45-year-old Kim Yau as she bought a copy.

“All Hong Kong people with a conscience have to support Hong Kong today, support Apple Daily.”

In another show of support, long queues formed at lunch time at the Cafe Seasons restaurant owned by Lai’s son, Ian, who was also arrested on Monday.

The United States last week imposed sanctions on several top officials over what it said was their role in curtailing political freedoms in Hong Kong. China responded with sanctions on top U.S. legislators and others.

By Yoyo Chow

Focus News: Hong Kong’s Apple Daily Vows to Fight On After Owner Arrested

Kodak Shares Drop After Loan Paused Amid Insider Trading Allegations

The agency had signed a letter of interest with Eastman Kodak on July 28 to provide the company with a $765 million loan. President Donald Trump announced the deal on the same day. The federal loan was intended to launch Kodak Pharmaceuticals to produce active pharmaceutical ingredients for generic drugs, to help reduce the United States’s reliance on other countries. The deal marked Trump’s 33rd use of the Defense Production Act. Kodak shares skyrocketed more than 1,100 percent just two days after the deal’s July 28 announcement. It reached a high of $60 a share on July 29. Kodak shares closed at $14.88 on Friday, and at $10.73 by Monday. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) sent a letter on Aug. 3 asking the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), an independent U.S. government agency that regulates…