How two fugitive opium dealers started a Hong Kong newspaper war

In footage proven to the courtroom, Lai factors his finger on the reporter, swears at him in Cantonese, and says: “I will definitely find someone to mess with you.” The reporter, whose id is protected by an anonymity order, stated Lai was threatening him bodily, and that he suffered psychologically from the episode. Prosecutors stated Lai was at a public occasion the place reporters had the appropriate to {photograph} him.

Lai pleaded not responsible to the cost of legal intimidation, which carries a most sentence of two years, and on Thursday was acquitted. “I am not worried at all, because this is a minor case and the charge felt forced,” he stated, earlier than the trial started.

In current years, Lai has made larger enemies than the Oriental Daily News, as he vigorously opposes Beijing’s affect on Hong Kong. The septuagenarian is going through a slew of legal prices, together with a number of beneath Hong Kong’s sweeping new nationwide safety legislation, which carries a most sentence of life imprisonment.

“It would be difficult for Apply Daily to survive if Lai was jailed,” stated Willy Lam, a professor in historical past on the Chinese University of Hong Kong and a former journalist, including that survival methods had been doubtless being put in place on the newspaper for that state of affairs.

“Lai is not the editor, but he is the person providing the money for the paper and the symbol of defiance. He is a symbol of freedom of the media, in both Hong Kong and the Western world.”

An opium fugitive

But earlier than officers had the chance to arrest Ma Sik-yu, broadly referred to as White Powder Ma, he escaped to the neighboring island of Taiwan, which has no extradition treaty with Hong Kong. His youthful brother Ma Sik-chun wasn’t so quick: he was arrested however managed to slide out of the town the following 12 months by boat whereas on bail.

The pair lived the remainder of their lives as fugitives in self-governing Taiwan, managing their media empire from afar.

“After that, the entire mission of that newspaper group was one thing: get them (the brothers) back to Hong Kong,” says Mark Simon, a senior government of Next Digital, which publishes the Apple Daily — his view was echoed by others who spoke to CNN on the situation of anonymity.

Publishing a {photograph} of Ma Ching-kwan with British Prime Minister John Major, and a menu from a dinner at 10 Downing Street he had attended on September 27, 1994 — three months after the donation had been made — the newspaper demanded a refund.

”We will categorically say that the Conservative Party didn’t or wouldn’t settle for donations conditional on favors,” an unnamed spokesman for the Conservative Party was quoted as saying in 1998 in British newspaper, The Independent.

After White Powder Ma died in 1998, his youthful brother was alone in Taiwan. Some, nonetheless, doubted Ma Ching-kwan ever actually needed his father again on dwelling soil.

“If his father came back, he would no longer be the king of the paper,” stated a long-time observer of the Oriental Daily News, who requested anonymity. “As it was, he had to send the front pages of the paper every day to Taiwan for approval before they hit the presses.”

In 2015, Ma Sik-chun died aged 77 in Taipei. He was nonetheless a needed man in Hong Kong.

An apple a day

At across the similar time the Ma brothers got here to Hong Kong, one other man destined to be a newspaper baron surreptitiously crossed over the border from mainland China trying to find a safer life.

“Jimmy busted open their distribution network,” says Simon, who’s Lai’s long-time, right-hand man, explaining that Apple Daily negotiated its means onto newsstands that had been usually reluctant to promote opponents of the Oriental Daily News.

Apple Daily started to dent the Oriental Daily News’ readership. “Jimmy didn’t realize that this would prove to be such an enormous affront to this paranoid bunch of people who were busy, on the one hand, trying to clear up their name, and on the other hand, make sure that they were still the most dominant publication in the market,” stated a long-time observer of the Oriental Daily News.

And as Lai’s feud with the Oriental Daily News intensified, Apple Daily fanned the flames, operating tales that saved strain on the Hong Kong authorities to not let the surviving Ma brother return from Taiwan.

Harassment

During Lai’s courtroom hearings final month, it emerged that since at the least 2013, Oriental Daily News has paid a staff of reporters to comply with Lai. The reporter whom the Apple Daily founder clashed with in June 2017 admitted in courtroom to usually trailing Lai leaving his home and work, taking pictures and video of these he interacted with, whereas all the time protecting a respectable distance and by no means upsetting him, he claimed.

“Why would you have a whole team of people being paid salaries for years on it and to follow around somebody you don’t like?” stated the shut observer of the Oriental Daily News empire. “It must have cost them an absolute fortune.”

But it wasn’t the primary time the Oriental Daily News had assigned reporters to tail folks it did not like.

In 1996, the Oriental Daily News sued Next Media for publishing on its entrance web page a image it had taken of pop star Faye Wong selecting up her baggage at Beijing Airport whereas pregnant, with out her consent. Oriental Daily News gained a small sum for the copyright violation, however was made to pay for its attraction by a choose, who individually dominated towards the paper in a case wherein it was charged with publishing a sequence of indecent pictures of bare ladies.

In its Kung Fu Tea column, the newspaper wrote: “Oriental does not care if you are yellow-skinned or white or a pig or a dog. In our self-defence, we are determined to wipe you all out! Here, Kung Fu Tea warns the pigs and dogs: don’t you bother me again. Otherwise, when I counterattack in self-defence, you will regret it exceedingly, you will regret it! I repeat: you will regret it very much!”

Multiple folks CNN approached for interviews for this text declined to talk on the document out of concern for his or her private security.

CNN reached out to the Oriental Daily News for touch upon why it had a staff monitoring Lai for years, and the considerations of interviewees of this text, however didn’t get a response.

Criminal intimidation

Then in February this 12 months, Lai was charged with legal intimidation on the advice of Justice Teresa Cheng, who has been sanctioned in August by the United States for undermining Hong Kong’s freedoms. Arthur Lee, barrister {and professional} advisor on the Chinese University of Hong Kong, stated typically when there’s a lengthy delay in prices being filed it may be attributable to a want to seek out extra proof, or distinction in opinion as as to if to prosecute.

In a assertion offered to CNN in response to a query on the preliminary delay in prosecuting the case, a spokesman for the Department of Justice stated that it was “not appropriate for the Department of Justice to comment on the matter.”

“I consider it somewhat farcical that this even came to trial,” stated Simon. “They harassed a guy to try to get a response and they got a response — but they didn’t get a guy trying to criminally intimidate anybody.”

In the choose’s verdict on Thursday, she stated she couldn’t “believe the reporter is an honest and reliable witness” and was not satisfied he was “genuinely scared.” The courtroom heard the reporter was seen smiling after the change with Lai.

There are nonetheless extra alternatives for Lai to go to jail this 12 months. In February and April, Lai was charged with illegal meeting for becoming a member of protests that had been banned by the federal government in August and October final 12 months. Each cost carries a most sentence of 5 years in jail. And Lai stays probably the most high-profile determine to be arrested beneath the nationwide safety legislation.

So far, the publicity round Lai’s arrests has given the Apple Daily a increase. Supporters final month rallied to purchase Next Media inventory, take out adverts within the paper and snap it up on information stands, inflicting it to promote out throughout the town and promote greater than half a million copies in someday. Simon says digital subscriptions for Apple Daily, which launched an English-language model this 12 months, are up by about 15% to 720,000, because the legislation got here in.

But if Lai was to be jailed, for any of the offenses he at present faces, the Oriental Daily News might discover itself with a clear lead on the newsstands. Lam, the historical past professor and former journalist, says that within the present local weather of rising media self-censorship, there’s rising fear that the Hong Kong and mainland governments will make life “more difficult for the newspaper — or even close it down.”

“Apple Daily is one of the very few media outlets which is there to criticize the Hong Kong and Beijing governments,” Lam stated. Losing it will “be a loss for the Hong Kong community and a defeat for freedom of the media.”

“I don’t feel miserable about being handcuffed, neither do I feel humiliated, not at all … I am doing all these because this place has treated me too well and this is what I should.”

The battle on the newspaper stands lives to see one other day.