I contradict Xi proudly. I wouldnt tell children the police killed 2000 of them in secret, under the cover or repeating taiwanese news, to excite some sort of defensive behavior in them.

If the police killed 2000 kids like this newspaper sometimes proclaimed, then all the violence the protesters used felt justified. That's why im on the fence in this case, and that s also why China is hysterical at that paper that did more propaganda than them.

Genuinely curious, what do you tell kids about the 1989 events in Tiananmen Square?

In every country in the world, when you claim that police murdered 2000 people, you will get in trouble. It has nothing to do with freedom of expression, exept when you have very good evidence but even then it's dangerous to make such claims.

This is not true.

Go on to Twitter right now and say those things. In almost every democracy, nothing will happen to you.

Put up a website and make that claim.

You might get banned from Facebook.

If the Apple journalists published information about the roughly 10 000 people that were killed in Tianamen protests, would they get shut down as well? [1]

Do you see somewhere in the UK or the US where 500 police raid a major news entity?

They might do that if the paper leaked sensitive military information ... but even then that'd be extremely rare and it would not happen merely for making ridiculous claims.

Anyone who challenges Xi or the CCP will end up in jail.

The obvious solution would be to allow Hong Kong residents to vote in their own leaders and decide for themselves.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-42465516

No you won't. There are lots of conspiracy theory lunatics running around in Western (or many other) countries claiming stuff like this and nobody is arresting them if they don't also propagate or participate in violence.

tell that to twitter or facebook

Was Apple Daily regularly sharing outright falsified stories?

Yes, I dunno what you call regular, but they repeated taiwanese rumours that were vastly exagerated. In 2019 saying the police didnt kill 2000 people in secret would warrant you a slap in the street, because of these newspapers that were a bit... activist ?

Kids that were arrested were hollered by these Apple Daily journalists to display their ID card to the camera in case they disappeared, creating a climate were they felt like oppressed freedom fighters rather than overly violent political activists.

Honestly me and my wife, at the beginning of Jimmy Lai s arrest were relieved because we felt it could stop the insanity a bit. Ofc China will go too far as usual but that's the feeling some of us have. Dunno how common it is, as it's hard to discuss calmly in HK.

Either people feel their little pride shattered by all this anti China discourse, or they feel invaded and tortured by the fact we're a Chinese city. Hard to discuss a middle ground where we ignore each other like we've done for 2 decades.

There's no middle ground really: China has taken over, you have no rights. That's it.

If you speak ill of someone powerful, you'll disappear one way or another.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Daily It's interesting that most people here don't read Apple Daily. Those who can read Apple Daily and know the real nature don't want to talk too much because the opinion doesn't align the majority of HNer's belief based on partial information.

It's a tabloid newspaper but more than that, it's full of hate and anger. That's its strength because there's a big market for it.