Recently, the Hong Kong government began to suppress and arrest the people who participated in the protest against the Extradition Law. The pro-mainland media in Hong Kong either give little coverage to the incidents or their reports are along the same line as the official party controlled media in the mainland. This has made the communities in Hong Kong quite angry. On July 4th, Hong Kong’s Apple Daily published its paper with the top part of the front page left blank and with ten Chinese characters on the bottom section which read as follows: “When freedom of the press is unreasonably suppressed.” It thus expressed its strong dissatisfaction with the Hong Kong government’s unreasonable suppression of freedom of the press. The “silence” of Apple Daily won the support of the people on the Internet. They posted the following messages: “Go! Apple!” “Don’t give up! We need you,” “Keep Going,” “I Support you.”
Also, Apple Daily had been hit with a strong Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack previously, which the newspaper believed was an attempt to try and suppress their reporting on Hong Kong protests.
Sources:
1. Aboluowang, July 7, 2019
https://www.aboluowang.com/2019/0707/1312159.html
2. Reclaim the Net, June 14, 2019
Hong Kong news outlet Apple Daily is under DDoS attack after protest coverage