Taipei exhibition offers look back at Hong Kong's Apple Daily

Taipei, June 19 (CNA) An exhibition featuring archives and memorabilia from Hong Kong's now-defunct Apple Daily opened in Taipei on Friday, offering a glimpse into the newspaper's history and evoking reactions from Taiwanese and Hong Kong visitors.

The exhibition, titled "Backing Up Apple, Recording Hong Kong," was organized by Pulse HK, a Hong Kong diaspora media outlet, to mark the fifth anniversary of the pro-democracy newspaper's closure.

Once one of Hong Kong's largest Chinese-language media outlets, Apple Daily was forced to close after police raided its newsroom on June 17, 2021 following accusations by Hong Kong authorities that it violated the national security law.

Among the charges were that Apple Daily colluded with a foreign country or with external elements to endanger national security.

As evidence, police said at the time that Apple Daily had published more than 30 articles since 2019 calling on countries to impose sanctions on Hong Kong and Chinese authorities.

The Hong Kong government seized Apple Daily's computers and database in the raid, and it froze the paper's assets, forcing it to close but not before it printed 1 million copies of its final print edition on June 24, 2021.

Similar exhibitions on Apple Daily have been held around the world, but the Taipei exhibition is the largest so far, with around 250 items on display, said Edward Li (李家聰), a co-founder of Pulse HK and a former Apple Daily journalist.

"We hope the exhibition can offer a more comprehensive look at Apple Daily's 26-year history," Li said.

The show explores the newspaper's changes over time and its relationship with Hong Kong society, "not only in politics, but also in culture and entertainment," Li said.

Items on display include copies of Apple Daily, including its Taiwan edition, as well as equipment used by its journalists, souvenirs and materials related to its founder, Jimmy Lai (黎智英), who is currently imprisoned in Hong Kong under the national security law.

The items were mostly contributed by former employees, past readers and Academia Sinica's Hong Kong Studies Database, according to Li.

Visitors' voices

Among the first-day visitors was a Hongkonger surnamed Lee (李), who told CNA he had traveled to Taipei specifically for the exhibition.

"To some extent, Apple Daily represented the thinking of a generation of Hongkongers," said Lee, who described himself as a loyal reader of the newspaper since its first edition in 1995.

After viewing the exhibition, Lee said he felt "deeply saddened," as it reminded him of a time when Hongkongers could take to the streets and express their views -- freedoms he said have now been "completely wiped out."

Following the enactment of Hong Kong's national security law in June 2020, large-scale pro-democracy protests have largely disappeared from the former British colony.

Taiwanese visitor Emma Chen said her previous impression of Apple Daily was that it was sensationalist, referring to its often tabloid-style coverage of crime, entertainment and celebrity news.

Chen said, however, that such coverage also reflected one side of society, while Apple Daily's willingness to cover Hong Kong's pro-democracy protests in 2019 was "remarkable," given the pressure it faced at the time.

Chen added that Apple Daily's closure also showed that Beijing's pledge that Hong Kong would remain unchanged for 50 years after its 1997 handover "was never going to be fulfilled," a lesson she said should serve as a warning to Taiwanese people.

For visitors interested in English-language guided tours, the organizers said Pulse HK will soon post information about such tours on its Facebook page.

The exhibition will run through July 15 at Xinfu Market Cultural Center in Taipei's Wanhua District, with regular closures every Monday.