6 Apple Daily staff plead guilty to collusion in Hong Kong

By KANIS LEUNG
Associated Press

HONG KONG (AP) — Six former executives of a now-defunct Hong Kong pro-democracy newspaper have pleaded guilty to a collusion charge under the National Security Law that has silenced and jailed most opposition voices in the southern Chinese territory. The staff members of Apple Daily were arrested last year during a crackdown on dissent after Beijing imposed the security law in 2020. They admitted that they had conspired with the newspaper’s founder Jimmy Lai to call for an imposition of sanctions or blockade, or engage in other hostile activities against Hong Kong or China. Police took away hard drives and laptops as evidence in a raid at Apple Daily’s offices in June 2021, sending shockwaves across the city’s media. The arrests and freezing of assets led it to cease its operations.