Jimmy Lai (黎智英), the imprisoned pro-democracy media tycoon who has become a symbol of the Chinese government’s crackdown on free expression in Hong Kong, will be sentenced at 10 a.m. on Monday (February 9), according to a court website.
The 78-year-old was found guilty last month in his Hong Kong national security trial of publishing seditious materials and colluding with foreign forces. Lai has been detained since December 2020 and faces life in prison.
Lai, who is a British citizen, founded the now-defunct Apple Daily newspaper, which was forced to shut down in the wake of massive pro-democracy protests that broke out after China imposed national security legislation on the city in 2019.
The national security legislation has undermined the independence of Hong Kong’s legal system and made it easier for authorities to suppress free expression and arrest and imprison pro-democracy activists.
Lai has been kept in solitary confinement for the last five years. The campaign to free Lai says he is being held in a facility without air conditioning, where temperatures in the summer can go up to 44 degrees Celsius (approximately 111 degrees Fahrenheit).
Supporters have also accused the Hong Kong government of denying Lai, a Catholic, access to Holy Communion.
Lai fled China to Hong Kong as a child and became a billionaire by founding his own clothing brand, Giordano, before breaking into media with Apple Daily and its sister pro-democracy outlet, Next Magazine.
Lai used his media properties to criticize the Chinese Communist Party and advocate for democracy in China. In a famous editorial published in 1994, he called Chinese Premier Li Peng (李鵬), a key figure in the bloody Tiananmen Square crackdown, a “turtle egg” (王八蛋) and told him to “drop dead.”
Lai’s daughter Claire Lai (黎采) told Catholic outlet EWTN News that her father’s incarceration has only deepened his faith, warning the Chinese Communist Party to not let Lai die a martyr in prison. “It is a stain on your history that you will never be able to wipe off,” she said.
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