Six people have been arrested after Hong Kong police raided a pro-democracy news site.

After arresting six people for conspiring to publish a seditious publication, Hong Kong police stormed the office of an online pro-democracy news outlet on Wednesday, the latest action in the city’s assault on dissent.

After the pro-democracy publication Apple Daily halted operations earlier this year, those arrested were linked with Stand News, one of the most vociferous pro-democracy news outlets in the city.

According to authorities, more than 200 officers were part in the search. Under a national security law passed last year, they had a warrant to take pertinent journalistic materials.

The six were arrested early Wednesday for conspiracy to print a seditious publication under a colonial-era offenses ordinance, and searches of their homes were underway, according to police. Those found guilty face a maximum sentence of two years in prison and a fine of HK$5,000 ($640).

Police arrested one current and one past editor at Stand News, as well as four previous board members, including singer and activist Denise Ho and former lawmaker Margaret Ng, according to the local South China Morning Post newspaper.

The arrestees were not identified by the police.

Ho’s arrest was confirmed by a Facebook post on her account early Wednesday morning. A subsequent statement on her behalf stated that she was fine and advised friends and supporters not to be concerned.

The post received approximately 40,000 likes and 2,700 comments, the majority of which were from supporters.

Stand News shared a video on Facebook early Wednesday of police officials investigating the alleged crime at the house of a deputy editor, Ronson Chan. Chan, who is also the chair of the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA), was detained for questioning, according to the HKJA.

Police seized Chan’s electronic gadgets, bank cards, and press card, according to Chan, who was later released.

The arrests came as authorities in the Chinese city’s semi-autonomous region crack down on dissent. Hong Kong police earlier raided the headquarters of the now-defunct Apple Daily newspaper, taking boxes of paperwork and hard drives to aid their investigation and blocking millions of dollars in assets, forcing the paper to close down.

On Tuesday, police charged Jimmy Lai, the former publisher of the Apple Daily, with sedition.

Due to the national security statute, Stand News said earlier this year that it will halt subscriptions and remove most opinion pieces and columns from its website. Six members of the company’s board of directors had also resigned.

In accordance with Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law, the HKJA encouraged the city’s authorities to defend press freedom.

“The Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) is profoundly disturbed that, within a year, the police have arrested top members of the media and raided the offices of news organizations carrying huge quantities of journalistic materials,” it said in a statement.

The arrests, according to Benedict Rogers, co-founder and CEO of the non-governmental group Hong Kong Watch, are “nothing short of an all-out assault on Hong Kong’s press freedom.”

“When Hong Kong’s Basic Law guarantees a free press, it’s a symbol of how quickly this once magnificent, open, cosmopolitan city has devolved into little more than a police state,” he said.

The arrests on Wednesday came after sculptures and other artwork were removed from university campuses last week. The artworks advocated for democracy and honored the victims of China’s 1989 crackdown on democracy protestors in Tiananmen Square, Beijing.