Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai instructed Apple Daily to promote resistance against government, seek support from the West, ex-publisher tells court
- Cheung Kim-hung, who was also CEO of tabloid newspaper’s parent company Next Digital, says Lai was ‘ultimate decision-maker and top leader’ of Apple Daily
- Referring to unofficial vote in 2014 on electoral reform, Cheung tells court: ‘For a large part of 2014, Apple Daily was like a newspaper that opposed the government and central authorities’
Cheung Kim-hung, who was also the CEO of the newspaper’s parent company, Next Digital, was first asked by the prosecution to confirm his earlier admission to a charge of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces as he took the witness stand in the tycoon’s national security trial at West Kowloon Court.
He said Lai, as Apple Daily’s “top leader and ultimate decision-maker”, had a “very clear” political stance and felt the government’s now-withdrawn extradition bill, which triggered the 2019 protests, encroached on the city’s democratic values.
The bill would have allowed for the transfer of suspects to jurisdictions with which Hong Kong did not have any extradition agreement.
The ex-publisher told the court that the 76-year-old tycoon believed the bill was the Chinese Communist Party’s attempt to penalise “defiant Hongkongers” and those it considered to be an eyesore by sending them to the mainland.