#jimmy lai

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jimmy Lai, Hong Kong pro-democracy figure, sentenced to 20 years in prison for national security offences

Family of media tycoon say he will ‘die a martyr behind bars’, amid widespread criticism from press freedom groups

Amy Hawkins at The Guardian:

Jimmy Lai, the media mogul and prominent pro-democracy activist, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison in Hong Kong for national security offences, a punishment his daughter said could mean “he will die a martyr behind bars”. Claire Lai said the sentence was “heartbreakingly cruel” given her 78-year-old father’s declining health, while her brother Sebastien Lai called the sentence “draconian” and “devastating”. The sentencing is the culmination of a years-long saga that critics say represents Hong Kong’s transformation from a mostly free city to one where dissent is fiercely suppressed by the Chinese Communist party-controlled authorities.

Lai was convicted in December on charges of sedition and conspiracy to collude with foreign forces. He had pleaded not guilty to all charges. The collusion convictions carry a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. The judges in Lai’s case described him as the “mastermind” behind the conspiracies. They granted him minor deductions on his sentences on health grounds. Lai’s 20-year term is the harshest penalty handed down for national security offences in Hong Kong. The sentence was condemned immediately by Taiwan, as well as press freedom and human rights groups.

Reporters Without Borders said: “Today, the curtain falls on press freedom in Hong Kong … This court decision underscores the complete collapse of press freedom in Hong Kong and the authorities’ profound contempt for independent journalism.” Human Rights Watch said the length of jail time given to Lai was “effectively a death sentence”. “A sentence of this magnitude is both cruel and profoundly unjust. Lai’s years of persecution show the Chinese government’s determination to crush independent journalism and silence anyone who dares to criticise the Communist party,” it said. Amnesty International called the case “another grim milestone in Hong Kong’s transformation from a city governed by the rule of law to one ruled by fear”.

[...] Lai is the founder of the now-defunct Apple Daily, a popular Hong Kong newspaper that supported the pro-democracy movement that swelled in the city in the 2010s. The movement was crushed in June 2020 by the imposition of a harsh national security law that criminalised most forms of dissent. The authorities said the law was necessary to restore stability to the city. Lai was arrested and charged under that law in August that year. Apple Daily was forced to close in 2021.

Hong Kong pro-democracy advocate Jimmy Lai sentenced to 20 years in prison. Lai’s arrest is the culmination of Hong Kong becoming increasingly unfree.

[sab-cat]

'He has suffered enough,' Jimmy Lai's daughter says after his conviction in Hong Kong

Hong Kong's High Court found media mogul and pro-democracy campaigner Jimmy Lai guilty of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and sedi

Dec 15, 2025

Geoff Bennett:

Hong Kong's High Court found media mogul and pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai guilty today of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and sedition.

The high-profile trial took place under a national security law imposed by mainland China in 2020, which punished people not only for what they did, but also what they said, anyone who — quote — "provoked the hatred of Beijing," who called for Hong Kong separation from mainland China, who received support from a foreign country, as judged by Beijing-backed courts.

Sentencing will take place next month. Lai, who was 78 years old, could be sentenced to life in prison.

[allthegeopolitics]

Hong Kong court convicts democracy activist Jimmy Lai on conspiracy charges

Advocates have described the verdict as an 'unlawful' decision based on 'trumped-up national security charges'.

The High Court of Hong Kong has convicted pro-democracy activist and newspaper founder Jimmy Lai on three charges related to accusations that he undermined China’s national security, as part of a widely scrutinised trial. Lai now faces the possibility of a life sentence in prison.

Continue Reading.

[archaeocommunologist]

I really have limited sympathy for Jimmy Lai, and I have zero time for the apologias for him in Western media. He was a billionaire media mogul! He was openly courting US politicians and asking them to declare sanctions against China! Depicting this as an attack on "freedom of expression," as if Lai was some nobody with a blog is ridiculous. He was playing hardball politics and he lost. As Lena Headey taught us, in the game of thrones you either skate or you die.

Now, I think you can fairly argue that the NSL is bad for other reasons, but it's frankly insulting to pretend that Jimmy Lai didn't do the things he was accused of. He very openly and obviously did. He declared himself an enemy of the PRC and he was treated as such. No state would allow someone like Lai to continue to operate the way he did, none. Maybe Beijing should have simply stripped him of his assets and left him a free man, but like, come on. These are the rules of the game as it is played!

[tuulikki]

What to know about the trial of Jimmy Lai, former Hong Kong media mogul

A Hong Kong court convicted pro-democracy former media mogul Jimmy Lai of conspiracies to commit sedition and collusion with foreign forces

Hong Kong was long known for its vibrant press scene and protest culture in Asia. But following months of anti-government protests that brought hundreds of thousands of people into the streets, Beijing began a sweeping crackdown that has chilled most open dissent in the city.

Lai was one of the first prominent figures charged under the National Security Law, which has also been used to prosecute other leading activists and opposition politicians. Beijing deemed the law crucial for the city's stability.

Dozens of civil society groups have closed, as tens of thousands of young professionals and middle-class families emigrated to destinations like Britain, Canada, Taiwan, Australia and the United States.

[jurakan]

This week, the international legal team for Jimmy Lai — the jailed newspaper publisher, pro-democracy campaigner, and devout Catholic — filed an urgent appeal with the UN’s Special Rapporteur on torture.  For those who need a refresher on the man and what he has been through, he was one of seven pro-democracy advocates arrested, convicted, and then cleared of organizing a demonstration following the 2019 bid by the Hong Kong government to pass legislation that would have allowed political detainees to be deported to mainland China to face trial. When his conviction was voided last year, he stayed in jail though.  Now he’s on trial for alleged national security crimes — “conspiracy to produce seditious publications and to collude with foreign powers.” Basically, he’s accused of publishing a newspaper which rightly called out the crackdown on basic civil liberties in Hong Kong for what it is — “the death knell” of the rule of law. Lai has been in jail since December of 2020, and the 76-year old is losing weight and visibly deteriorating.  For all of that time he has been in solitary confinement, often in his cell for 23 hours and 10 minutes a day.  He does not see the sun on a regular basis. He is diabetic, but denied access to specialist medical care. The place where he is being held has a long and established track record of subjecting prisoners in solitary confinement to bright 24-hour lighting, and extreme temperatures. If he is convicted following his current trial (just the most recent of several vexatious prosecutions against him over recent years) he faces life in prison. Lai’s UK based lawyers argue his conditions amount to torture, and they seem to me to have a self-evident case.  I would add to the list that the reason he has an international legal team at all is because the Hong Kong government has blocked him from appointing his own preferred (and very qualified) lawyer to act in his defense there. I would further add that he has repeatedly cited his Catholic faith as the force sustaining him during his imprisonment — which he has called the “pinnacle of his life” — and has been living his solitary confinement as a kind of monasticism.  Yet, I’ve been told by people close to his situation, as part of his jailing, while he has been allowed to receive occasional visits from priests, they have been banned from bringing him Communion — an act of pure vindictiveness by his jailers. Indeed, from what I have been told, he has been held without access to the sacrament at least since his most recent trial began last December. So, in Jimmy Lai, we have a journalist who has been jailed for advocating for democratic freedoms (enshrined in Hong Kong’s own law), denied legal due process, access to needed medical care, and even to the sacraments of his Catholic faith. His is, at this point, a one-man human rights abuse bingo card.  We will, of course, continue to report on his trial as it progresses, though I’m under no illusions that international pressure or appeals to the UN are likely to secure his release, or even his transition to a more humane regime of imprisonment, any time soon.  But it is important that his witness is marked, his suffering recorded, and his name remembered. Both for his own sake, and for the sake of all those being slowly ground under the wheel in Hong Kong, we cannot forget Jimmy Lai.

-Ed Condon, The Pillar, "Goldenmouth, remember his name, and no winning"

[panicinthestudio]

Explainer: Hong Kong’s national security crackdown – month 47

More than three years after they were arrested, 16 democrats who pleaded not guilty in a landmark national security case finally heard their verdicts from Hong Kong’s High Court. They are among 47 defendants in the case, of whom 31 pleaded guilty. Most of the 47 have been held in custody since February 28, 2021.

Further reading:

HKFP: Explainer: How, and why, the gov’t banned protest song ‘Glory to Hong Kong’, May 17, 2024

[supersoftly]

“I have a soul,” said my lunch partner at The Hong Kong Club on February 20, 2019. 

Jimmy Lai and I had been talking about a recent CNN newscast that had shown his Hong Kong home under surveillance not by police but by unidentified “watchers” who also followed him to his office at Apple Daily, the independent newspaper and broadcasting corporation of which he was the founder and chief executive. 

Although Hong Kong was then still being liberally governed under the “one country, two systems” deal established in 1997 when the city was transferred from the UK’s to China’s control, the Communist Party of China (CPC) “watchers” were an early indication of how the city might lose its relative political openness and freedom of speech. 

I had asked Lai what was driving him down a path that might lead to increasing conflict with CPC boss Xi Jinping, to loss of his wealth and very possibly to jail and/or execution. He explained that all the money in the world was useless if it came at the cost of the truth.

“What use is my money, if I can’t openly say what I think?” he asked.

He went on to explain that “the Communists think they can buy and/or intimidate everyone off, create their own reality, and write their own history. Effectively, they assume the role of God. They are kind of a religion or an anti-religion."

“They have initiation into the party as a kind of baptism. They have self-criticism as a kind of confession of sins, re-education as a kind of penance, and elevation to hero of the party as a kind of sainthood. And, of course, at least Mao [Zedong] has a kind of everlasting life as a photo smiling down on Tiananmen Square and as an embalmed corpse in a casket in the square.” 

“But,” said Lai, “the party and its members do not have souls. In fact, they are dead men walking, because the truth is not in them.” (x)