Hong Kong pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai (黎智英), founder of the now-defunct Apple Daily newspaper, turned 78 years old in prison yesterday.
Lai, who faces the prospect of life in prison under national security charges, has been jailed for more than 1,800 days amid Beijing’s aggressive crackdown on the autonomy it had promised Hong Kong when Britain handed the city over to China in 1997.
Lai fled China to Hong Kong as a child as a stowaway on a fishing boat. There, he worked in factories as a child laborer, rose to become a manager and eventually bought his own factory. He became a billionaire as an entrepreneur, founding his own clothing brand, Giordano, before moving into media as founder of the pro-democracy Next Magazine and Apply Daily newspaper.
Lai used his publications to advocate for democracy in China and criticize the Chinese Communist Party. In a famous editorial published in 1994, he told Chinese Premier Li Peng (李鵬), a key figure in the bloody Tiananmen Square crackdown, to “drop dead.” Apple Daily provided extensive coverage and support for protests that forced the government to abandon plans to introduce pro-China curriculum in schools and allow extraditions from Hong Kong to China.
Lai is currently on trial under national security legislation that Beijing imposed on Hong Kong in 2020. He has pleaded not guilty to two counts of conspiring to collude with foreign forces, which carry a maximum sentence of life in prison, and a separate count of conspiring to publish seditious material.
Human rights organizations including Reporters Without Borders, Human Rights Watch and Hong Kong Watch see Lai as a prisoner of conscience, jailed for free speech. In the view of the Hong Kong government and the Chinese Communist Party, Lai’s influence and participation in the anti-government protests represent a threat to stability and national security.
In honor of Lai’s contributions to press freedom and democracy, the U.S. Congressional Select Committee on China introduced a resolution on December 4, designating December 8 as “Jimmy Lai Day.”
The resolution, which received congressional bipartisan support, states that the Chinese Communist Party and the Hong Kong government have long held Lai and other political prisoners in solitary confinement, ignoring their medical needs. According to international human rights standards, this constitutes a serious violation of basic personal dignity. The resolution calls on the Hong Kong government to immediately and unconditionally release him.
His children Claire (黎采) and Sebastien Lai (黎崇恩) said that Lai, who suffers from diabetes and has heart problems, has been kept in solitary confinement in a facility without air conditioning, where temperatures in the summer can go up to 44 degrees Celsius (approximately 111 degrees Fahrenheit).
During a trip to Washington to seek support to aid Lai’s release, Lai’s children Claire Lai and Sebastien Lai told Agence France-Presse that their father, who suffers from diabetes and has heart problems, has been kept in solitary confinement in a facility without air conditioning, where temperatures in the summer can reach 44 degrees Celsius (approximately 111 degrees Fahrenheit).
“His nails turned purple-gray or greenish and then fell off, and his teeth have rotted away,” said Claire, who added that prison guards refused to let her father, a devout Catholic, receive Holy Communion and engaged in petty gestures to demoralize him.
Lai’s son, Sebastien, urged U.S. President Donald Trump and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer to continue pressing China on his father’s case, noting that his father is a British citizen. “It would only take two hours to put my father on a plane and fly him out,” Sebastien said. “Doing so would be the humanitarian thing and the right thing,” he added. “They’re putting him through hell.”
Leave a Reply