Raids and arrests were conducted on August 10. The Department for Safeguarding National Security(DSNS) of Hong Kong Police Force was out on duty to apprehend Jimmy Lai and the top executives of Next Media, which caused an uproar not only in Hong Kong, but also overseas. People lining up in queues to buy Apple Dailly very early next morning, a rarely seen full front-page ad placed in the newspaper and the stock price of Next Media rocketing mirrored in all aspects people trying to proactively save the media outlet with crowdfunding while giving off their chests the resentment at the authorities strangling the media. That was novelty to Hong Kong people, but an old anecdote to some that have fared in South Korea for quite a while.

About half a century ago, on October 10, 1974, journalists of Dong A-Il-bo, a newspaper in South Korea(SK), published the Free Press Declaration levelled at the then authoritarian rule, pledging support for the students fighting for democracy in SK. Two months later, Park Jung-hee’s authoritarian government struck back by banning all commercial and other organizations from placing ads in Dong A-Il-bo. The advertising boycott against Apple Daily by communist Hong Kong might be inspired by strongman Park Jung-hee.

With the income source cordoned off, it goes without saying Dong A-Il-bo got plunged into a financial plight. What the people in power could not foresee was the reaction they instigated: other media outlets, journalists, students, Christians and even servicemen showed support by placing classified ads in the newspaper. A large number of people had to stand in lines on the street to finish their missions. The creative notes on Apple Daily’s Lennon Wall are in the same vein with those classified ads: “Dong A-Il-bo fills my life with joy”, “When I’m asked in the future by my kids what I did in 1975, I can proudly tell them I stood in the frontline of fighting for free press”, “I know these classified ads are bullets of the people”, “Politicians, businessmen and fellow nationals, let’s not be cowards”, “Being deaf and blind is way more painful than hunger”, “Dong A-Il-bo has lit a torch for the tribulations over the past 50 years”.

Dong A-Il-bo had had great difficulty in making ends meet for months. Between March and May in 1975, the people in power found themselves unable to hold back anymore, so ordering the media outlet to sack 49 reporters and editors whom the former did not like. To cut expenses, the institution also relieved 84 employers of their posts. Ordering to fire the journalists was admittedly effective in silencing the press, creating internal conflicts, driving a wedge among employees of the newspaper, as well as dealing a blow to the morale.

Though the SAR government is not yet so savage as to order to fire media outlets' personnel, “aspirants with ulterior motives” can try to persuade KOLs to take themselves off the air. To avoid being convicted of words, some authors have stopped writing, fleeing from peril and turmoil. In fact, a lot commentators in town have taken sides early on. Under the rule of the National Security Law, the media industry looks sombre and desolate. Staying reticent has not reached the standard yet. Now that the DSNS, wielding the 1938 riot law of the colonial government, has arrested Tam Tak Chi of the People Power for his seditious words inciting hatred against the government, the campaign of silencing dissent has just unfolded, with a lot more operations coming one after another.

SK was democratized in 1987. However, the democratic government, which was not much different from the authoritarian government that had been keen on getting rid of dissent, curbed the press by different means. Instead of cutting off income source and firing journalists, the administration led by Kim Dae-Jung, the first opposition candidate to win the presidency, despatched the tax bureau to audit the account books of 23 media outlets and their proprietors, charging them with fabricating account entries in which USD 1 billion income were missing, and being in arrears with taxes of USD 400 million. Penalized with USD 200 million, the owners of Chosun Il-bo, Korea Daily News and Dong A-Il-bo were thrown in jail.

In Hong Kong, 200 police officers conducted a raid on the headquarters of Next Media. Matthew Cheung Kin-chung, Chief Secretary for Administration, gave himself away by writing a letter to The Wall Street Journal for “clarification”, pledging the move was not intended to interfere with freedom of the press, but to take into custody the senior executives of Next Media for their suspected “conspiracy to defraud”. While there is this Commercial Crime Bureau in Hong Kong Police Force, deploying the DSNS to track down a commercial crime was tantamount to making a mountain out of a molehill. Senior executives of media outlets are all sophisticated people, not robbers like Yip Kai Foon, Kwai Ping Hung and Cheung Tze Keung. Was it necessary to get their hands cuffed and put them before the public in a parade?

Without doubt, auditing is a means easy to use. Three years after Kim Dae-Jung’s administration made use of this to punish Dong A-Il-bo, a thorn in his flesh, the Guangzhou government arrested Cheng Yizhong, the outspoken editor in chief of the best-selling Southern Metropolis Daily, for graft and seizing national assets. In 2017, The Cambodia Daily, the only English publication in Cambodia, stopped operating for being able to pay a tax of USD6.3 million. In view of the red ink in the financial ledgers of Apple Daily’s, fabricating an offence of tax evasion is hardly convincing. Maybe, that’s why the DSNS had to be out on duty to incite shock and awe.

With the case of Dong A-Il-bo in history, the paper version of Lennon Wall in Apple Daily made up by the readers is even more touching and moving. Nonetheless, as the old saying goes: “It is impossible to subsidize a poverty-stricken friend”, the readers will get exhausted sooner or later in this “fight against tyranny”. In the long run, everybody loosening the purse strings to subscribe to Apple Daily is the only feasible way to prop up this media outlet. Cutting off income stream is only the first hit. Various means like arrest and auditing are following, with only one objective – weeding out all dissent.

Since two thousand years ago, Chinese people have grasped the saying - “It will cause more harm to stop free flow of people’s voices than to stop that of the rivers”. Now in the internet era that everyone has a smartphone in pocket, to silence everyone is not only to show no understanding of the times, but also a “mission impossible”, which will only propagate hearsay and rumors that will end up buffeting the credibility of the people in power, miring down the administration and threatening public security. In this sense, stifling freedom of the press is also held culpable for people being terribly suspicious of the free COVID-19 diagnostic test.

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