A Hong Kong court docket ordered the highest editor of pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily and the top of its dad or mum firm held with out bail Saturday within the first listening to since their arrest two days in the past underneath the town’s nationwide safety legislation.
Ryan Law, the chief editor, and Cheung Kim-hung, the CEO of Next Digital, have been charged with collusion with a overseas nation to hazard nationwide safety in a case extensively seen as an assault on press freedom within the semi-autonomous Chinese territory.
Chief Magistrate Victor So mentioned there was not adequate grounds to consider they’d not violate the safety legislation once more and ordered them held on the Lai Chi Kok detention heart. He set the following listening to for August 13.
Law and Cheung arrived on the court docket in an unmarked white van with lined home windows. A handful of activists held up a banner and copies of the Apple Daily exterior earlier than the listening to started.
Three others additionally arrested Thursday two Apple Daily senior editors and one other government haven’t been charged but and have been launched on bail late Friday pending additional investigation.
The Apple Daily has lengthy been probably the most outspoken defenders of civil liberties in Hong Kong. It supported large protests demanding extra democracy in 2019 and has criticized the next crackdown, together with the enactment of a nationwide safety legislation final 12 months.
The central authorities in Beijing has defended the laws and the crackdown on opposition voices as obligatory to revive order and stability. The 2019 protests that challenged Beijing’s rule usually began as peaceable marches through the day however become violent clashes between hard-core demonstrators and police at night time.
Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai is presently serving a 20-month jail sentence after being convicted of taking part in a job in unauthorized assemblies rallies and marches that had not obtained police approval through the 2019 protests. He has additionally been charged underneath the nationwide safety legislation.
The newest arrests mark the primary time journalists have been focused underneath the brand new legislation, apart from a freelancer who was arrested for pro-democracy actions. Hundreds of police and safety brokers who raided Apple Daily’s workplace on Thursday additionally seized 44 onerous drives, and authorities froze $2.3 million of its belongings.
Police mentioned the arrests have been primarily based on greater than 30 articles that had appeared within the Apple Daily for the reason that safety legislation took impact and that had referred to as for worldwide sanctions in opposition to China and Hong Kong.
The safety legislation particularly criminalises colluding with a overseas nation, establishment, group or particular person to impose sanctions or a blockade in opposition to Hong Kong or China. Critics say Beijing is strolling again on its promise on the 1997 handover of Hong Kong from Britain that the town may retain its freedoms not seen elsewhere in China for 50 years.
The U.S. has imposed sanctions in opposition to Chinese and Hong Kong officers over the crackdown and referred to as for the fast launch of the Apple Daily editors and executives.
Asked how journalists ought to keep away from getting in hassle, Hong Kong Security Secretary John Lee advised a information convention this week that the reply is easy: Do your journalistic work as freely as you want in accordance with the legislation supplied you don’t conspire or have any intention to interrupt the Hong Kong legislation and positively not the Hong Kong National Security Law.
