Apple Daily to shut in days unless government agrees to plea to unfreeze assets
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HK's Apple Daily raided by 500 officers over national security law - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27546138 - June 2021 (231 comments)
They're the last major news organisation in HK that are not under owned or controlled by a company on the Mainland.
It's one more nail in HK's coffin under One Country Two Systems.
While yes it would certainly be more independent if it was independent, I'm surprised at how they still publish pretty critical, self-aware pieces. Maybe some mainland news are also like this and I just don't know what normal is.
If anyone has a recommendation for the equivalent of, say, The Atlantic or Harper's Magazine in mainland China I'd really love to hear.
The whole media environment has shifted now, and the SCMP, while still providing some critical coverage, is a shadow of what it was.
Frustratingly, critical articles also seem to be edited to within an inch of their life. You can easily spot where content has been removed and/or replaced as the tone shifts dramatically and the subject inexplicably changes within articles.
It’s still a useful resource, because Mainland media is almost entirely devoted to replicating propaganda now (unlike during the Hu era).
It’s just a shame that the critical articles that used to be its bread and butter are now outliers within the newspaper.
However, it you continue to run it as a mostly unbiased/outsider publication, it'll be more credible when the occasional bit of propaganda is mixed in.
What's the alternative? Abrupt change that not only gives away it's new ideological slant, but also could serve as a rallying point?
An obvious turn to media manipulations.
SCMP is the only HK media with access to state events most mainland government media can't get access to.
You always see them getting very oddly timed "leaks", and "insider interviews" — things for which people get firing squads in the mainland.
Let's see how they explain their trumpist ties, because Im not naive enough to believe Apple Daily did all their insane drum up without a bit of encouragement from elsewhere.
It s easy now to speak like a freedom fighter, but in 2019 Apple Daily was insane. They d encourage you to attack, I havent forgotten.
A fight Apple Daily is unlikely to win. Even supposing the Court of Final Appeal (CFA) came down on Apple Daily's side, the Hong Kong government would just appeal to the NPCSC in Beijing saying the CFA is misinterpreting the Basic Law, and zero doubt the NPCSC will make a binding interpretation of the Basic Law overturning the CFA's decision. The Hong Kong judiciary has zero power against Beijing.
The best thing would be if all the foreign judges (British, Australian and Canadian) resigned from the Hong Kong judiciary, to stop contributing to its false appearance of independence. I think if any of them refuse to resign, the governments of their home states should give serious consideration to compelling them to do so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Court_of_Final_Appeal_(Hong_Ko...
It is stipulated in the Sino British Joint Declaration and established by the Basic Law of HKSAR.
Anyway it was under this historical context that China proposed to invite foreign judges to sit in Hong Kong courts to boost the confidence of skeptics in the future of the region.
Fast forward to now, this is still a tool for the Hong Kong government, to silence critics that the judiciary is being pressured by Beijing in trying political cases. At least, if judges your country are involved in deciding appeal cases there, your government can't really say with a straight face that they're systematically persecuting political dissidents.
The UK has been trying to pull out their judges but from news reports I've read they're (the UK govt and judges) having a hard time agreeing to a coherent plan...
PS: the actual role they have is similar to a judge in a supreme court. They get a "vote" (out of usual 5) how on how to decide the case if invited to sit for a particular case.
The fact that they would need to explain such ties, even if they existed, before a court is part of the problem.
Because things like that do happen in US courts, and it would be very easy to go to jail if you had such associations and did things that would normally be protected, such as leaking national secrets or knowingly publishing false information, that would then be seen as national security infractions.
You can argue that it's a bad thing, but this isn't something unieq to HK. In pretty much all of the world coordinating with geopolitical enemies puts you in hot water.
Actually, coordinating with some Russian or Chinese officials is literally illegal in the US because of sanctions and may put you in jail, since it seems money was involved.
Not really. News agencies publish leaked classified national secrets all the time and freely publish false information without penalty.
News cannot steal the information, i.e. hacking into the Pentagon would be off limits (which is why Julian Assange is wanted), but if someone else steals it, they can publish it. Publishing stuff in Wikileaks documents is not illegal.
Foreign journalists freely operate in the USA. RT certainly has an anti-American agenda. It gets to criticize and claim and publish false information and yes, even report leaked national secrets.
So yes, in court, it was decided whether or not RT was an agent of the Russian government, which is exactly the question at had in the post I was replying to.
This is not actually applied since the end of the Cold War, but legally per the Foreign Agents Registration Act if you don't register as a foreign agent despite being one, even without being notified you should, you are committing a crime can be convicted.
So, for example, being in contact with Xi Jinping or his lackeys and engaging in political action without registering as a foreign is actually a crime. And yes, people were prosecuted for that. But that's beyond even the point that I was stating, as a matter of FARA a court can and does inquire about that.
RT is not right now being pursued for it, but people in the US can be pursued for doing things such as lying or leaking national secrets, ie things that would normally be protected under the first amendment, if they are doing so in furtherance of the goals of a foreign government without registering officially beforehand.
For a recent case, see the case of Elliot Brodly which was found guilty for engaging in lobbying for a foreign government.
These laws in the US are very, very selectively enforced. The lack of prosecution of a certain entity doesn't mean anything. BBC reporters in the US are technically committing a federal offense by not registering as foreign agents, but the government will never prosecute them for that. RT, on the other hand, was forced to register, and WEB Dubois was prosecuted for even less on the same laws.
Update: I found it https://www.justice.gov/nsd-fara/legal-authority
But FARA is for from the National Security Law in HK. No immediate seizure of all assets as in the case of HK Apple Daily. And US has a robust legal system for disputes, unlike the NSL court in HK that is tightly controlled by the CCP. You cannot discuss just the specific law without discussing the legal system as a whole.
The US may have a robust legal system, but in the case of FARA this is completely undermined by the executive branch. What the US gains in judicial independence, it loses in sélective enforcement. The end result is that the US government can selectively shut down foreign agents and jail them, just like the Chinese government.
There's no need to compromise the judiciary when the law is there black on white, by doing what Jimmy Lai allegedly did in the US without disclosing it beforehand, you can go to jail for years. It's just that it's so selectively enforced that you could arrest a random BBC journalist for the exact same reasons.
[citation needed]
Many people still don’t know the exact reason why Apple Daily was charged a few days ago under the NSL.
https://theinitium.com/article/20210618-opinion-hk-what-does...
> 但「串謀」計劃到底是什麼計劃？「串謀」和「正常新聞工作」之間的界線到底是什麼？有哪些具體的文章能成為證據？是評論文章還是報導中引用的受訪者的話？證據如果還未蒐集到位為何就能實施拘捕？⋯⋯對此局方一概沒有交代，畢竟，案件還處在「調查階段」，而永遠是說不清也不能說清楚的「國家安全」超然凌駕所有程序。
https://beta.thestandnews.com/politics/%E5%9C%8B%E5%AE%89%E6...
> 保安局局長李家超及國安處高級警司李桂華會見傳媒時，均沒有交代涉案數十篇呼籲制裁中國及香港的文章題目、具體內容為何
Can you elaborate, according to the NSL and the official statements, why Apple Daily was charged this time?
In fact, the official statements from a few days ago didn’t mention Jimmy Lai at all, contrary to your claim (by doing what Jimmy Lai allegedly did in the US without disclosing it beforehand).
11 hours ago you argued in another thread [1] as if you knew a lot about Apple Daily and HK law. But apparently not so anymore.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27587603
> Turn it around, if a newspaper in the US was asked to explain ties to Xi Jinping or Putin before a court would that be of note? […] You can argue that it's a bad thing, but this isn't something unieq to HK.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27588235
> If Apple Daily and Jimmy Lai had no contact at all with foreign agents, it would have applied unambiguously.
I argued that courts caring about foreign affiliations of media is not unique to Hong Kong. And indeed it isn't, it happened in the US just a few months ago and apparently no one cared.
If you're not disputing that FARA gives the US government the ability to oust or imprison foreign news organizations at the total discretion of the executive, I don't understand our disagreement.
Because of the first amendment (that you completely missed).
CGTN and RT are alive and kicking in the US, despite the FARA. Did they dissolve like the Apple Daily?
Didn’t Tiktok survive Trump’s ban a year ago? (That’s an executive order, not FARA, but that doesn’t matter when we are talking about executive power and the legal system.) Numerous argued against it on the grounds of free speech. [1][2]
“oust or imprison foreign news organizations at the total discretion of the executive”? Are you sure?
[1] https://www.eff.org/zh-hant/deeplinks/2020/09/trumps-ban-tik...
[2] https://variety.com/2020/digital/news/trump-bans-tiktok-wech...
[citation needed]
As a matter of law they are forced to disclose these associations and subject to penalty if they do not. That can include criminal charges to individuals and has, during the Cold War, to people who "didn't disclose".
I thought this was common knowledge?
And NSL has immediate seizure of all assets, forcing Apple Daily to close immediately. Anything like that in the US?
It was only mere 2 years ago when Hong Kong courts decided against the government when they tried to implement emergency measures against wearing masks to quell the uprisings. (This almost led to disaster due to almost-overreaction from NPCSC... which is one of the reasons why judges are less willing to challenge the government now...)
You can argue that NSL courts have judges specifically appointed for the role by the Hong Kong government, but it's still rather comparable to most other legal systems where head of state or the government appoints judges. The US president appoints judges. This in itself doesn't make those judges "tightly controlled"...
If the HK courts give an unfavorable verdict, the CCP can always transfer the case to the courts of mainland China, per Article 55 of the NSL.
(People’s Daily made such a threat a few months ago when the high court granted Jimmy Lai bail, which was later overturned by the final court. [0])
It’s like saying that I will flip a fair coin, but I will keep flipping and only accept the last outcome when it turns up head. Not biased at all!
Now tell me again it’s not tightly controlled.
[0] https://thediplomat.com/2021/01/the-struggle-over-jimmy-lais...
The US legal system in this case uses extreme selective enforcement. There is no need for it to be corrupted, the executive holds all of the power because it decides who to ignore and who to punish, and indeed it wields this power very selectively. So the end result is the same as if the judicial system was corrupt.
Has any company in the past decade been forced out of business by FARA before trial? Any case from among this list? https://www.justice.gov/nsd-fara/recent-cases
Not apples to apples.
None of the prominent cases (during cold war or not) has forced any company out of business [0]. Some companies/individuals were required to register, and a few were fined, but nothing as drastic as you claimed. (“they could completely financially deprive the organization”)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Ac...
And China Global Television Network was forced to register as a foreign agent in 2018 due to FARA. The fact that it is still running today in the US, without having all its assets seized, speaks a lot about how HK’s NSL is much harsher than US’s FARA.
Your comparison doesn’t hold at all.
The Peace Information Center was dissolved as a result of a FARA lawsuit. Individuals were eventually found not guilty, but not before 8 years of being banned from travel.
Wikipedia doesn't mention the dissolution of the PIC, which is an example of why you should not treat Wikipedia articles as exhaustive. If they state something, it's likely true, but the converse is incorrect. There is even a warning to this extent somewhere on Wikipedia.
It’s incorrect to blame the travel ban on FARA (and executive power), since the passing of the McCarran-Walter Act had Senate’s support after Du Bois was arrested.
Peace Information Center didn’t dissolve due to financial issues. (BTW, your earlier claim “FARA in the US would allow for unlimited fines” is also incorrect. Hefty, but far from unlimited, and easily covered by HK protesters [2], although financing Apple Daily is now banned by the HK NSL, which is another difference to FARA). That’s quite a bit different from the Apple Daily case, which dissolves because its assets were fully seized.
Was PIC dissolve due to the lawsuit? Probably. If Apple Daily (or CGTN or RT) were hit by FARA today like PIC did, would Apple Daily dissolve? Unlikely.
Equating US FARA to HK NSL would be wrong. HK NSL is way harsher. It’s like equating the freedom of press in the US and in China. Huge difference, even if the laws on their own look similar on paper.
[1] https://www.aaihs.org/surveillance-state-power-and-the-activ...
[2] https://www.hk01.com/%E6%94%BF%E6%83%85/579210/612%E5%9F%BA%...
Got a citation for that? An internet archive link perhaps?
And they did a very good thing doing so.
And now you are in such a rut because you failed to heed this call.
That's the worst of both worlds: you lose free local press but you still get CNN.
The denizens of Hong Kong already have a wide selection of CCP-owned media to choose from.
Some of his innovations - such as 3D news event simulations that Lai's Next Media began publishing in the 2000s - made an impact far beyond Hong Kong and Taiwan (https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTOE6AS04Q20101129)
It's sad to see this entrepreneurial news venture come to an end like this. It's criminal that Lai and his top editors have been thrown in jail.
I think the more balanced sentiment (which I've seen across my friends and a couple "KOLs") is that -- it's a trash tabloid, and it's also fighting for freedom and democracy. It's both, and given the current situation it is in, most people are willing to overlook its past as a trashy tabloid and voice support for it.
(IMHO that doesn't make it less trash though.)
Can’t quite get how balanced the sentiment is as seen from your friends and… KOLs? Seriously?
Most people have always supported Apple Daily, not just because of the situation. And honestly I’ve never heard of anyone referring it as trashy tabloid, I mean… even those who oppose it know it is a proper newspaper.
You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
If you are referring to against mainland China people on anti-immigration issue. It is quite normal as the citizens don't agree the government's policy on allowing mainland non-professionals to be HK citizens easily (500+ mainland Chinese people becoming HK citizens per day), statistically speaking more than 70% of them doesn't have a degree and is using government funding to survive every month (which is actually from HKers' tax) as I recall.
If your Conspiracy Theories are about COVID vaccinations, which many HKers believe that they want to wait for 1-2 years to make sure the long term side effect is minimal. I do think that is understandable given that there are quite some correlation of certain side issues (not causation)
[1]: https://www.tourism.gov.hk/en/tourism-statistics-2018.php
Why should we be afraid of China PR?
What? I see claims of Japanese racism everywhere on the internet. A load of people seem to think it's one of the most racist countries on earth.
Yet in my 5 years here, and as someone visibly foreign, I've never been treated differently from a local. If anything, being treated completely normally put a lot of pressure on me early on since the only thing holding me back was my own lack of language ability.
It’s over the CCP and open sympathetic parties own all the rest of the media.
We are totally screwed.
more like major fake news company.
And the way the police and court deal with it, there is just an arbitrary rule on Hong Kong.
It is the end of liberal (general sense or you can use free) Hong Kong.
How do we possibly get 2+ million upset about this? Clearly they can’t arrest 1/3rd the population but it’s feeling like 2047 came early.
Free people should extend protection from Chinese influence to the Philippines, Africa, and other areas as well.
I can’t talk about this in person or in the streets.
Sucks.
I had seriously expected maybe two or three years before the crackdown.
As an aside, I’ve seen zero action from the current administration with respect to managing China. Maybe they’re still figuring out their plan but as valuable time passes I feel they’re going to spinelessly let China bully Hong Kong and the world. Do we need to start emailing and calling representatives to see action? Any other ideas from this community?
Another option seriously worth considering is to start withdrawing the special privileges which Western countries give to Hong Kong, and start treating it as just another part of the Mainland. If Beijing has no respect for Hong Kong's autonomy, why should anyone else respect it either?
Even if it wasn't, the international courts have no power to compel any judgement. But I don't think it would even get there.
I doubt it would work, not because of national security, but because of jurisdiction. Unlike some other countries, China has not accepted the general jurisdiction of the ICJ. That greatly limits the ability to get a case against China before the ICJ. A case could be brought with China's consent, but obviously in this case China will not consent. The Joint Declaration itself has no dispute resolution clause. I think the UK's only hope is to find some other treaty it has with China (or maybe even Hong Kong SAR) which does have a dispute resolution clause, and use that to try to backdoor the issue of the Joint Declaration into an international court (ICJ, PCA, etc). That's not impossible, because there are actually some treaties to which both the UK and China are parties with mandatory ICJ jurisdiction. However, these treaties are on seemingly unrelated topics like racial discrimination or health. Trying to squeeze the dispute about the Joint Declaration into a dispute about some other such treaty is going to be legally rather difficult, and the odds are against the UK succeeding if they tried, but I don't think we can rule it out as completely impossible–lawyers can be very inventive.
If we assume the UK manages, against the odds, to overcome the jurisdictional hurdle, and some international court accepts the case – I'm not convinced they'd give China as much deference on the "national security" issue as you think. If "national security" means whatever China wants it to mean, it turns other provisions of the Joint Declaration (such as the guarantee of freedom of the press) into a nullity.
> Even if it wasn't, the international courts have no power to compel any judgement
That's true. If an international court rules against Beijing, Beijing will just condemn the court and ignore the judgement. International legal action against China has no hope of making any difference on the ground in Hong Kong. But it does have some hope of infuriating Beijing and causing them to lose face. That's not much, but it isn't nothing.
It doesn't actually turn for example the free press clause into a nullity, it just means there is a conflict and one supercedes the other. It's not uncommon in law. If Apple Daily and Jimmy Lai had no contact at all with foreign agents, it would have applied unambiguously.
So clearly it doesn't turn it into a nullity, it just limits it.
Beyond that, fundamentally, the law was negotiated by the UK from a position of massive weakness, as they militarily simply could not hold Hong Kong, and legally wouldn't be able to supply it either. It is expected that debilitating clauses are included.
One such clause is that China has total sovereignty in anything that concerns foreign affairs or defence.
I think a lot of the UK's weakness was self-inflicted. They were one of the first Western nations to switch recognition from ROC to PRC, all the way back in 1950. The US didn't make the same move until almost 30 years later. If the UK stuck with ROC for longer, they could have bargained a better deal on Hong Kong with PRC, in exchange for PRC recognition. Instead they gave up that bargaining chip for nothing.
> as they militarily simply could not hold Hong Kong
Would one nuclear state (PRC) would rush into war against another (the UK)? PRC loved to threaten, but what if the UK had stated that it reserved the right to respond to a conventional attack on Hong Kong with a nuclear counterattack? Consider also that the UK had a 10 year head start on nuclear weapons (1952 vs 1964).
The UK seriously considered threatening PRC with nuclear weapons in the 1960s [0]. However, it appears the UK plan was not to threaten PRC with its own nuclear weapons, but instead try to convince the US to threaten the PRC with US weapons. The plan apparently fell through when the US, after expressing some initial openness to the idea, began to get cold feet. The threat was never publicly made.
In any case, if push came to shove the PRC would have simply invaded HK. There is nothing the UK could have done to prevent it.
Indeed, the Declaration gives the mainland full authority over national security matters, and as much as one wouldn't like it to be true, the Apple Daily does have/had direct links to the US government which just categorized the PRC as a security threat.
From that point of view its hard to argue this isn't a national security matter. Certainly that doesn't mean it shouldn't be protected, in the best of words as long as they are clear with their biases media should be allowed to have such affiliations, but that doesn't make it less of a national security matter.
Methinks China gets away with it even as a matter of legality wrt the Joint Declaration.
The first part of this is nonsense.
But I am particularly amused by this statement.
The international community you are referring certainly has equal or less population than China mainland alone.
On which ground it gives the superior name of “the international communicaty”.
Note: I am not in any means say China is right or wrong.
But first thing first. Everyone needs to understand who are the everyone. Don't pretend some group automatically represent the voice of the all or majority.
The international community includes China, Russia, all of the African countries whose capital you probably don't know, and more, and they never agree, so you can never say "the international community" meaningfully. It's always a borderline supremacist equivocation.
And in the case, probably the majority of the actual international community would agree with China. That doesn't mean that they're right, it's just how the world actually works.
As far as deciding that the whole agreement is no longer in force, I don't see how that's an issue with the Chinese take. Without the agreement, the facts on the ground is that HK is under Chinese control, and the UK has no recourse but to invade it again.
It's not like British control of HK was based on anything else before the agreement.