Hong Kong’s leading independent newspaper, Apple Daily, said it was closing down Wednesday and would print its final issue Thursday, succumbing to an unprecedented campaign by the Beijing-backed government to silence a popular tabloid at the center of the city’s democracy movement.
The decision came hours after police arrested a columnist for the paper and days after authorities froze $2.3 million in company assets and arrested five editors and executives under the territory’s draconian national security law, which was imposed last year by mainland China’s ruling Communist Party.
The newspaper is accused of conspiring with foreign countries to slap sanctions on China and Hong Kong over the territory’s diminished autonomy — charges largely viewed as a pretext by authorities to muzzle dissent.
The board of Apple Daily’s parent company, Next Digital, issued a statement citing the “current circumstances prevailing in Hong Kong” as the reason why the newspaper would print its last issue Thursday.
The closure brings an end to a newspaper that crashed onto the scene two years before the 1997 handover of the former British colony to China with a mixture of lurid reporting, gossip and coverage of the Chinese mainland that irked the Communist regime.
Owned and operated by the brash apparel magnate Jimmy Lai, Apple Daily made little effort to hide its editorial stance supporting democracy and Hong Kong’s continued autonomy, which was guaranteed for 50 years under the handover agreement signed by Britain and China.
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