on Monday 10 August, Mike Pompeo said he is “deeply concerned” by the arrest of media baron Jimmy Lai by the government of hong kong. This arrest is “further evidence that the chinese communist Party has eviscerated the freedoms of hong Kong, and the rights of his people,” wrote on Twitter the us secretary of State.
In the day, the government of hong kong has conducted a series of arrests. On the one hand, Jimmy Lai, the media baron and fabulously wealthy man in his seventies, was arrested for suspicion of collusion with foreign forces, one of the offences covered by the new legislation safe entry into force at the end of June, and fraud. On the other hand, Agnes Chow, activist, pro-democracy, was arrested in the name of the controversial law on the national security imposed by Beijing. According to a police source, ten people in all were arrested that day.
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This day marks a new stage in the takeover muscular of this ex-british colony. “These agitators and anti-chinese concert with foreign forces, have seriously endangered the national security “, ” Jimmy Lai is one of their representatives “, said in a statement the chinese office in charge of following the situation in hong Kong and Macao. Agnes Chow has been apprehended under this act on national security, announced a police source.
” It is now confirmed that Agnes Chow was arrested for “inciting secession” under the national security act, ” one can also read it on the account Facebook of this activist known. Among those arrested are also two of the sons of Jimmy Lai and Wilson Li, who claimed to be a videographer and free-lance working for the british television channel ITV News.
A law “repressive”
Considered to be a response from Beijing in the months of demonstrations in favour of democracy which had undermined hong Kong in 2019, the legislation recently introduced to give local authorities new powers to suppress four types of crimes against the security of the State : the subversion, separatism, terrorism, and collusion with outside forces. Number of pro-democracy activists are denouncing a text liberticidal that comes in to finish, according to them, with the principle of “One country, two systems” that led to the retrocession in 1997 and guaranteeing theoretically until 2047 for hong Kong’s freedoms unknown in the rest of China.
Jimmy Lai, the boss of Next Digital, the owner of two titles critical of the chinese regime, the Apple daily and Next magazine. In the late morning, around 200 police officers arrived at the group headquarters, in an industrial area in the district of Lohas Park (south-east). Journalists from Apple Daily live-streamed on Facebook the images of the search : the editor-in-chief of the daily Law Wai-kwong appears in the process to ask for their mandate to the police.
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they have ordered the journalists to stand up and line up for identity checks, while others have searched the newsroom. And Jimmy Lai has been brought on the scene, handcuffed. Chris Yeung, the president of the Association of journalists in hong kong, called the police operation ” shocking and terrifying “. “This is unprecedented, and it was unimaginable a month ago or two,” he told Agence France-Presse.
Law Wai-kwong has, for its part, sent a note to its journalists, in which they request to stay at their post to allow the release of the next edition of the journal. The foreign correspondents ‘Club in hong Kong has the view that this police raid marked” a new dark phase “. Chris Patten, the last british governor of this territory, has accused the authorities of waging ” the assault of the most outrageous, which is what remains of the free press in hong Kong “, while the european Union has denounced Monday the use of the new security law to ” stifle freedom of expression “.
A hero to many
For many hong Kong people engaged in the movement in favour of democracy, Jimmy Lai is the only tycoon in hong kong to stand in front of the central power. Rare are the inhabitants of the former british colony to attract so much hatred from Beijing that this man is now 71 years old, regularly described as a “traitor” by the State media chinese who see him as the instigator of the challenge of 2019. The accusations of collusion with a foreign power have increased in the past year, when he met the us secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the vice-chairman Mike Pence.
Two weeks before the security act is imposed in hong Kong, Jimmy Lai had said in an interview with Agence France-Presse that he was “ready” to go to jail. This pattern press is the archetype of the self-made man. He landed clandestinely to hong Kong with his family at the age of 12 years, on board a ship from Canton. He began to work as a small hand in a factory, and then, the thirty approaching, learned English and opened her own textile company.
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This is the suppression of the uprising of Tian’anmen square in Beijing in 1989 who has transformed her political vision and, in 1990, he founded Next Media. “As long as I’m alive, Next Media will not change “, admitted to Agence France-Presse a few years ago this father of six children. In his interview at the end of June with Agence France-Presse, he explained that the safety act would ” sound the death knell for hong Kong “. The chinese authorities and hong kong had, on the contrary, assured that she would not have any impact on the freedoms in this territory semi-autonomous.
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