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HK’S HARASSED APPLE DAILY PRINTS ITS LAST EDITION
- By The Financial District
- Jun 24, 2021
- 2 min read
Hong Kong's pro-democracy tabloid Apple Daily announced it will print its last edition on June 24, 2021, after a stormy year in which it was raided by police, and its tycoon owner and other staff were arrested under a new national security law, Marius Zaharia reported for Reuters.
The closure of the popular tabloid, which mixes pro-democracy views with racy celebrity gossip and investigations of those in power, marks the end of an era for media freedom in the Chinese-ruled city, critics say.
"Thank you to all readers, subscribers, ad clients and Hong Kongers for 26 years of immense love and support. Here we say goodbye, take care of yourselves," Apple Daily said in an online article.
At least one million copies are expected to be printed for the tabloid’s final edition. France is attached to the freedom and plurality of the press, government spokesman Gabriel Attal told reporters on Wednesday in reaction to Apple Daily's decision to print its last edition.
Apple Daily's support for democratic rights and freedoms has made it a thorn in Beijing's side since owner Jimmy Lai, a self-made tycoon who was smuggled from mainland China into Hong Kong on a fishing boat at the age of 12, started it in 1995. It shook up the region's Chinese-language media landscape and became a champion of democracy on the margins of Communist China.
While viewed as tawdry at times by some of its critics, the tabloid has served as a beacon of media freedom in the Chinese-speaking world, read by dissidents and a more liberal Chinese diaspora - repeatedly challenging Beijing's authoritarianism.
Lai, whose assets have been frozen, has been in jail since December on charges of taking part in unauthorized assemblies, stemming from pro-democracy protests.
Rights groups, media organizations, and Western governments have criticized the action against the newspaper.
"It will put a lot of pressure on all those who write reports or editorials," said Ronson Chan, head of the Hong Kong Journalists Association. "We just don’t know what the red line is.”
