Hong Kong’s Apple Daily’s newsroom was raided on Thursday by 500 officers over alleged violations of China’s national security law.
Authorities sifted through reporters’ computers and notebooks around dawn and arrested five executives of the newspaper. Around 38 computers were seized by police.
The five people arrested were editor-in-chief Ryan Law, chief executive officer Cheung Kim-hung, Chief Operating Officer Chow Tat-kuen, Deputy Chief Editor Chan Puiman and Chief Executive Editor Cheung Chi-wai.
Jimmy Lai, the pro-democracy tabloid’s owner, already had his assets frozen under the law and was serving a prison sentence for participating in illegal assemblies.
According to CNBC, police also froze HK$18m of assets owned by three companies linked to Apple Daily even as they claimed that the raid was not aimed at the media industry as a whole.
In a letter to its readers, Apple Daily claimed it was a victim of a “targeted attack by the regime,” but that its staff “will continue to stick to their posts loyally and fight to the end.”
It’s the second raid that the newspaper has experienced after its headquarters was accessed by police in 2020 on suspicion that Lai had been colluding with foreign forces that were critical of Beijing.
China’s Hong Kong Liaison Office showed its support for the raid and described it as a “just action” by the police.
