Hong Kong’s Apple Daily Newsroom Raided By 500 Officers

Five hundred Hong Kong police officers sifted through reporters’ computers and notebooks at pro-democracy tabloid Apple Daily on Thursday.

Around dawn, reportedly, police arrested five executives of the newspaper, and officers were later seen sitting at computers in the newsroom after entering with a warrant to seize journalistic materials, including phones and laptops.

The raid is the latest blow to media tycoon Jimmy Lai, the tabloid’s owner and a staunch Beijing critic, whose assets have been frozen under the security law and who is serving prison sentences for taking part in illegal assemblies.

In comments raising further alarm over media freedoms in Hong Kong, Security Secretary John Lee described the newsroom as a “crime scene” and said the operation was aimed at those who use reporting as a “tool to endanger” national security.

He did not elaborate on the dozens of articles police said they were taking aim, at but said the five were arrested for a conspiracy to make “use of journalistic work” to incite foreign forces to impose sanctions on Hong Kong and China.

Senior superintendent Li Kwai-wah said the tabloid’s reports dated back to 2019, without saying when the most recent were published. The legislation is not retrospective but prosecutors can use actions from before its implementation as evidence.

Police have also frozen $2.32 million of assets owned by three companies linked to Apple Daily and said that the raid was not aimed at the media industry as a whole.