A total of 53 VPN applications have become unavailable in Apple’s Hong Kong App Store since Beijing imposed a national security law (NSL) on the city in June 2020, a report by AppleCensorship has revealed.Many other VPN apps, including the most popular ones, remain in the Hong Kong App Store.AppleCensorship said these VPNs ensure Hongkongers will always have a looking glass into content that may get removed, but added that “if more VPN apps are removed from Hong Kong, or if Beijing requests that Apple enforce a systematic categorical ban on VPNs, as it currently does in China, that looking glass could disappear quickly.”Apart from VPN providers, the watchdog also found that some media apps have become unavailable in Hong Kong’s App Store, including TV Martí +, developed by the United States Agency for Global Media, and news aggregator NewsBreak: Local News.In light of its findings, AppleCensorship called for the US tech giant to declare publicly whether it would resist any takedown requests from Beijing or Hong Kong government agencies.Benjamin Ismail, the project director of Apple Censorship, told HKFP he thought it was still possible for the public or organisations to pressure Apple into resisting app removal requests from Hong Kong and Beijing."