Topical 13/8/20

The tentacles of the Chinese Communist Party have long reached around the world and are now closing ever more tightly on Hong Kong. The latest suffocation of freedoms has come with the handcuffing and arrest by Beijing authorities of Hong Kong newspaper proprietor Jimmy Lai, owner of Hong Kong’s ‘Apple Daily’ tabloid and members of his team. Mr Lai is a critic of the oppressive CCP regime and is paying the price in the communists’ accounting. This arrest even resonates in Narrabri – the Apple Daily is regularly attender at annual Australian newspaper and media conferences which are attended by papers big and small, including The Courier, who chat with the Apple Daily representatives, some of whom have now, no doubt, been swept up in the arrests. When Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, announced new ‘national-security’ laws on July 1, she promised Hong Kong would “continue to enjoy freedom of speech, freedom of press, of publication, protest, assembly and so on…”