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By Fion Khan /
Staff writer, with CNA
An exhibition of collected archives from Hong Kong’s defunct newspaper Apple Daily is scheduled to open in Taipei on Friday, organizer Pulse HK (追光者) said.
Apple Daily ceased operations on June 24, 2021, ending its 26-year run, Pulse HK, an online news platform established by the newspaper’s former journalists, said on Friday last week.
In the past five years, Hong Kongers did not only lose a newspaper, but also a city that once enjoyed freedom of speech and a flourishing, diverse media landscape, it said.
Photo: Screen grab from Pulse HK’s Facebook page
Jimmy Lai (黎智英), the newspaper’s founder, was first arrested under the Beijing-imposed National Security Law in August 2020 and has been imprisoned since Dec. 31, 2020.
The 78-year-old was accused of “conspiring to collude with foreign forces” and “conspiring to publish seditious material.”
Following police raids on its newsroom and the freezing of its assets, the paper published 1 million copies of its final print edition on June 24, 2021.
As a member of civil society upholding values of freedom and democracy, Apple Daily held the authorities accountable with its investigative reporting, Pulse HK said, questioning how the paper could be regarded as “seditious material.”
Regardless of whether the newspaper did the right thing, it was part of history, despite its flaws, the news platform said, adding that “it indeed existed in our time and it tried.”
Pulse HK said it decided to extend the event, which was originally scheduled to run for only three days, to allow more people to reflect on Apple Daily’s role in Hong Kong’s history.
The exhibition, titled “Backing Up Apple, Recording Hong Kong: Special Exhibition of Apple Daily Collections,” is to run from Friday to July 15 at the U-mkt (新富町文化市場) in Wanhua District (萬華).
Holding the exhibition in Taiwan — a land of democracy and freedom — is not about longing for the past, but about preserving history, the organizer said.
The exhibition is to feature rare artifacts and major reports since the newspaper’s founding in 1995, documenting pivotal moments in Hong Kong’s history, from the British colonial era and the handover of sovereignty in 1997, to the “Umbrella Movement” in 2014 and the anti-extradition bill movement in 2019, it said, adding that some items are to be displayed publicly for the first time.
The organizer said they hope that an objective presentation of history would allow participants to reflect on what Apple Daily meant to the city, while keeping faith in democracy and freedom alive.
Some of the items are scheduled to be donated to Academia Sinica’s Hong Kong Data Research Archive after the exhibition closes, ensuring this period of history would be properly preserved in a free and secure academic environment and passed on to future generations, they said.
These historical traces of Hong Kong’s collective memory would not disappear after the event concludes, they added.
The Taipei exhibition would serve as a starting point for future international touring exhibitions, allowing members of the Hong Kong diaspora community to see the materials firsthand and international society to continue to remain connected to the reality and pulse of Hong Kong, they said.