Apple Daily will persist in Hong Kong, even though press freedom is “hanging by a thread,” said the local newspaper in an open letter to readers on Thursday after 500 police raided its headquarters and arrested five of its staff in the morning. Hong Kong police confiscated a large number of journalistic materials and electronic devices, including 38 computers and cell phones belonging to journalists, after a five-hour raid of the local pro-democracy newspaper on Thursday morning. The journalistic documents were labeled as evidence of a “crime” under Beijing’s national security law. Two executives and three news staff, who were arrested early on Thursday morning at their homes, were charged with violating Article 29: “collusion with foreign countries or foreign forces to endanger national security.” The paper’s associate publisher Chan Pui-man, CEO Cheung Kim-hung, and chief editor Ryan Law were among the five arrested on Thursday morning. Apple Daily told …