Pro-democracy media tycoon freed on bail amid Hong Kong crackdown
HONG KONG, China — Hong Kong pro-democracy media mogul Jimmy Lai walked free on bail Wednesday, over 40 hours after he and other critics of China were rounded up by police as part of a widening crackdown on dissent.
When Lai left a police station he was swarmed by a crowd of journalists and cheering supporters, some of whom waved copies of his Apple Daily in a show of their backing.
A clampdown has gathered pace in Hong Kong since China imposed a sweeping security law in June, with opposition politicians disqualified and activists arrested for social media posts.
The moves have provoked outrage in the West and fear for millions who last year took to the streets to protest communist China's tightening grip on the semi-autonomous city.
In one of the most dramatic days of the crackdown, Lai was among 10 people detained under the new law on Monday as around 200 police officers searched the newsroom of his tabloid, which is unapologetically critical of Beijing.
Lai did not address the crowd upon his release, but he flashed a thumbs up as he was bundled into a car that inched away through the crowd.
In a display of solidarity for Lai, people in the city rushed to buy Tuesday's Apple Daily, with the newspaper saying it had upped its print run to 550,000 from the normal circulation of 70,000.
One restaurant owner bought 50 copies at a newsstand in the commercial district of Mong Kok and said he planned to give them away free of charge.
"Since the government doesn't allow Apple Daily to survive, then we as Hong Kongers have to save it ourselves," the man, who gave his surname as Ng, told AFP, as dozens of people lined up around the city from the early hours.
The newspaper's front page showed a picture of Lai being led away in handcuffs, with the headline "Apple will fight on".
Lai's arrest sparked a buying spree in shares of his media group, and between Monday morning and closing time on Tuesday its stock value had risen by more than 1,100 percent.
'Eviscerated'
Hong Kong's new national security law criminalises secession, subversion, terrorism and colluding with foreign forces.
The most serious crimes under the law -- which was introduced on June 30 and is not supposed to be retroactive -- carry up to life in jail.
Its broadly worded provisions criminalised certain political speech overnight, such as advocating sanctions, and greater autonomy or independence for Hong Kong.
Similar laws are used on the authoritarian mainland to snuff out opposition.
Lai, 71, was held on charges including colluding with foreign forces and fraud. The operation was hailed by Beijing, quick to declare him an "anti-China rabble-rouser" who conspired with foreigners to "stir up chaos".
Among the others arrested were two of Lai's sons, young pro-democracy activist Agnes Chow and Wilson Li, a former activist who works as a freelancer for Britain's ITV News.
Chow was released on bail late Tuesday.
"It's very obvious that the regime and the government are using the national security law to suppress political dissidents," she told reporters after her release.
'Barbarous' sanctions
Critics believe the security law has ended the key liberties and autonomy that Beijing promised Hong Kong could keep after its 1997 handover by Britain.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo described Lai's arrest as "further proof" that Chinese authorities had "eviscerated Hong Kong's freedoms and eroded the rights of its people".
"We're going to respond in real ways," Pompeo later promised in an interview with Newsmax.
The United States has already imposed sanctions on a group of Chinese and Hong Kong officials -- including city leader Carrie Lam -- in response to the crackdown.
Hong Kong's police said those arrested were part of a group that had previously lobbied for foreign sanctions.
In response to objections made by Hong Kong's Foreign Correspondents' Club to the arrests, the Chinese foreign ministry warned that "eagerly justifying Jimmy Lai is nothing short of siding with the forces sowing trouble in Hong Kong and China at large".
"We call on the FCC, Hong Kong to respect the facts, distinguish right from wrong, and stop smearing under the pretext of press freedom the implementation of the National Security Law," it said.
Millions march in Hong Kong in a powerful rebuke of an extradition law feared to expose them to China's capricious justice system.
Hong Kong national security police on Thursday detained four people, including the brother of prominent activist Dennis Kwok, one of eight fugitives with bounties on their heads for allegedly breaching national security.
The city's national security department "took in two men and two women from various districts in Hong Kong and Kowloon for investigation," a police source told AFP.
Among the four was the elder brother of former democracy lawmaker Dennis Kwok, who is currently in the United States.
"(Kwok's elder brother) is now under investigation in the Western District police station," the source said.
Three others, "two women and a man", were taken in Tuesday by the national security department, authorities told AFP earlier Thursday.
AFP has requested comment from police on the most recent detentions. — AFP
Three family members of exiled democracy activist Nathan Law have been taken in for questioning on Tuesday, days after authorities issued a bounty on him and seven others accused of breaching the city's national security law.
Police officers from the national security department brought in Law's parents and elder brother without formally arresting them, a police source confirmed to AFP.
"It's understood that officers from the NSD took three people -- Nathan Law's parents and elder brother -- in for questioning," they said.
"So far, no arrest has been made." — AFP
The United States condemns Hong Kong authorities for issuing bounties linked to democracy activists based abroad, saying the move sets a dangerous precedent that could threaten human rights.
Hong Kong police offered bounties of HK$1 million (about $127,600) for information leading to the capture of eight prominent dissidents who live abroad and are wanted for national security crimes.
"The United States condemns the Hong Kong Police Force's issuance of an international bounty" against the eight activists, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller says in a statement.
"The extraterritorial application of the Beijing-imposed National Security Law is a dangerous precedent that threatens the human rights and fundamental freedoms of people all over the world," he adds, saying China is engaging in "transnational repression efforts."
"We call on the Hong Kong government to immediately withdraw this bounty, respect other countries' sovereignty, and stop the international assertion of the National Security Law imposed by Beijing." — AFP
Hong Kong's top court has quashed the conviction of a journalist in relation to her investigation into an attack on democracy supporters by government loyalists in 2019.
It was a rare victory for the press industry in a city where two major independent news outlets have been forced to shut down since Beijing imposed a national security law in 2020.
"Happy -- I could not think of another word that can describe my mood right now," veteran journalist Bao Choy said outside the Court of Final Appeal after the judgement was handed down.
"I think this kind of happiness belongs to everyone in society." — AFP
Hong Kong police detained Alexandra Wong, a prominent democracy activist better known as "Grandma Wong" on Sunday, the 34th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, AFP reporters said.
Wong was carrying flowers in Hong Kong's Causeway Bay shopping district, an area that for years was the site of June 4, 1989, commemorations, before authorities escorted her to a police van. AFP reporters saw a total of six people bundled into police vehicles. — AFP
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