Tag Archives: traitor

Hong Kong’s Apple Daily vows to fight on after owner arrested

By Yoyo Chow

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Hong Kong’s Apple Daily tabloid responded with defiance on Tuesday to the arrest of owner Jimmy Lai under a new national security law imposed by Beijing, promising to fight on in a front-page headline over an image of Lai in handcuffs.

Readers queued from the early hours to get copies of the pro-democracy tabloid a day after police raided its offices and took Lai into detention, the highest-profile arrest under the national law.

“Apple Daily must fight on,” the front-page headline read, amid fears the new law is eroding media freedoms guaranteed when the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

“The prayers and encouragement of many readers and writers make us believe that as long as there are readers, there will be writers, and that Apple Daily shall certainly fight on.”

More than 500,000 copies were printed, compared with the usual 100,000, the paper said on its website.

Mainland-born Lai, who was smuggled into Hong Kong on a fishing boat when he was a penniless 12-year-old, is one of the most prominent democracy activists in the city and an ardent critic of Communist Party rule in Beijing.

His arrest comes amid a crackdown on the pro-democracy opposition in Hong Kong that has drawn international criticism and raised fears for freedoms promised by Beijing under a “one country, two systems” formula.

The sweeping security law imposed on June 30 punishes anything China considers secession, subversion, terrorism or collusion with foreign forces with up to life in prison.

The city’s Beijing-backed government and Chinese authorities say the law is necessary to restore order after months of at times violent anti-government protests last year, sparked by fears China was slowly eroding those freedoms.

Hong Kong has since become another source of contention between the United States and China, whose relations were already at their most strained in years over issues including trade, the coronavirus, China’s treatment of its Uighur Muslim minority and its claims in the South China Sea.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday called Lai a “patriot”, saying Beijing had “eviscerated” Hong Kong’s freedoms.

Britain said Lai’s arrest was further evidence the security law was a “pretext to silence opposition”, to which China’s embassy replied by urging London to stop “using freedom of the press as an excuse to discredit” the law.

‘DANCING WITH THE ENEMY’

Police detained Lai for suspected collusion with foreign forces after about 200 officers searched the newspaper’s offices, collecting 25 boxes of evidence.

Handcuffed and apparently wearing the same clothes after spending the night in jail, he was driven by police on Tuesday to his yacht which police searched, according to media footage.

Beijing has labelled Lai a “traitor” in the past and issued a statement supporting his arrest.

The Beijing-backed China Daily newspaper said in an editorial Lai’s arrest showed “the cost of dancing with the enemy.” The paper added that “justice delayed didn’t mean the absence of justice”.

Police arrested 10 people in all on Monday, including other Apple Daily executives and 23-year-old Agnes Chow, one of the former leaders of young activist Joshua Wong’s Demosisto pro-democracy group, which disbanded before the new law came into force.

Chow was released on bail late on Tuesday, calling the arrest of herself and other activists “political persecution.”

“It’s very obvious that the regime is using the national security law to suppress political dissidents,” she said.

Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement has managed to sustain broad support across the community.

Shares in Next Digital, which publishes Apple Daily, surged for a second day, gaining more than 2,078% from Friday’s close, after online pro-democracy forums called on investors to show support.

Its market value rose as high as HK$5.17 billion ($666.7 million) from some HK$200 million.

In the working-class neighborhood of Mong Kok, dozens of people queued from as early as 2:00 a.m. (1800 GMT) to buy Lai’s paper.

“What the police did yesterday interfered with press freedom brutally,” said 45-year-old Kim Yau as she bought a copy.

“All Hong Kong people with a conscience have to support Hong Kong today, support Apple Daily.”

In another show of support, long queues formed at lunch time at the Cafe Seasons restaurant owned by Lai’s son, Ian, who was also arrested on Monday.

The United States last week imposed sanctions on several top officials over what it said was their role in curtailing political freedoms in Hong Kong. China responded with sanctions on top U.S. legislators and others.

($1 = 7.7501 Hong Kong dollars)

(Additional reporting by Jessie Pang, Carol Mang, Donny Kwok and Clare Jim; Writing by Marius Zaharia; Editing by Stephen Coates, Robert Birsel and Nick Macfie)

Putin calls poisoned ex-spy Skripal a scumbag and traitor

FILE PHOTO: Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech during a session of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russia September 12, 2018. Mikhail Metzel/TASS Host Photo Agency/Pool via REUTERS

By Dmitry Zhdannikov and Denis Pinchuk

MOSCOW (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday called Sergei Skripal, a former Russian double agent poisoned in Britain, a scumbag who had betrayed Russia.

Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found slumped on a public bench in the English city of Salisbury in March. Britain says they were poisoned with a nerve agent administered by Russian intelligence officers.

Russia denies involvement in the affair, which has deepened its international isolation.

“I see that some of your colleagues are pushing the theory that Mr Skripal was almost some kind of human rights activist,” Putin said at an energy forum in Moscow when asked about the case.

“He was simply a spy. A traitor to the motherland. He’s simply a scumbag, that’s all,” Putin added, in remarks that drew applause from parts of the audience.

The Russian leader, a former intelligence officer himself, said the Skripal scandal had been artificially exaggerated, but said he thought it would fade from the headlines at some point and that the sooner it quietened down the better.

Putin said Moscow was still ready to cooperate with Britain when it came to investigating what happened, an offer London has so far declined to take up.

British officials say the poisoning was carried out by Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency almost certainly acting with the approval of Russian officials. Russia has denied that.

‘ONE OF OLDEST PROFESSIONS’

Putin also dismissed the allegation that Russia was responsible for the accidental poisoning of Dawn Sturgess, a Salisbury-area woman who British police said died after coming into contact with the nerve agent Novichok which her partner had found in a discarded perfume bottle.

“What, did some guys rock up and start poisoning homeless people over there?” said Putin, repeating a description of Sturgess and her partner used by some Russian state media. “What rubbish.”

Skripal had served time in a Russian prison for selling information to Britain, and Moscow had agreed to release him as part of a spay swap, said Putin, suggesting Russia therefore had no motive to kill him.

“We didn’t need to poison anyone over there. This traitor Skripal was caught, he was punished and did five years in prison. We let him go, he left the country and he continued to cooperate there and consult some intelligence services. So what?”

The two Russian men Britain accuses of jetting to England to try to murder Skripal said in a TV interview last month that they were innocent tourists who had visited the city of Salisbury to see its cathedral.

London says their explanation is so far-fetched as to all but prove Russia’s involvement, while investigative website Bellingcat has published a picture of a decorated Russian military intelligence colonel it named as Anatoliy Chepiga who resembles one of the two men Britain caught on CCTV.

Putin said spy scandals were nothing new.

“Did problems between intelligence services start yesterday?” quipped Putin.

“As is well known, espionage, like prostitution, is one of the world’s oldest professions.”

(Writing by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Christian Lowe and)