Ahead of this week’s resumption of the national security trial of Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong pro-democracy activist and founder of the defunct Apple Daily newspaper, Amnesty International’s China Director Sarah Brooks said:
“The years-long pre-trial incarceration of a 76-year-old man simply because his newspaper dared to criticize the government and report public discussions lays bare the disintegration of respect for human rights in Hong Kong.
“Lai’s case is not being heard by a jury; instead, the decision rests with a judge handpicked by Hong Kong’s chief executive. Lai, like almost all others in ‘national security’ cases, has been denied the right to bail and prevented from choosing his own lawyer. His trial is a shameful retreat from general principles of fair treatment, dignity and due process.
“The authorities’ cruel persecution of Jimmy Lai is motivated solely by his exercise of the right to freedom of expression and commitment to press freedoms. He is a prisoner of conscience, and the Hong Kong authorities must release him immediately and unconditionally, drop the charges and expunge all his criminal convictions.”
Background
Jimmy Lai’s national security trial is due to resume on 20 November, having been adjourned in July after the court dismissed a legal submission by Lai’s Hong Kong lawyers, who said that there was no case to answer. The trial began on 18 December 2023 after numerous delays.
Lai was charged under the Beijing-imposed National Security Law three years earlier, on 11 December 2020, with two counts of “conspiracy to commit collusion with foreign countries or external elements,” and one count of “collusion with foreign countries or external elements”. He has been continuously detained since 31 December 2020.
Hong Kong authorities said the charges related to the publication of articles in Apple Daily, a newspaper owned by Lai, that called on foreign countries to impose sanctions. Authorities also cited Lai’s meetings with US politicians and interviews with overseas media, his Twitter (now X) posts and his list of followers on the platform which included prominent foreign politicians and NGOs supportive of the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong.
Lai, a British national, was denied bail in February 2021 when Hong Kong’s highest court ruled that National Security Law cases were an exception to the presumption in favour of bail. The Hong Kong government also prohibited Lai’s British lawyer Timothy Owen from representing him.
Jimmy Lai founded the outspoken Apple Daily in 1995. Shortly after the National Security Law was introduced on 30 June 2020, nearly 200 police raided the newspaper’s headquarters. It was the first time the law was invoked to search a media outlet’s premises, and Lai was arrested along with his two sons and several newspaper executives.
Apple Daily closed in June 2021 following another police raid and the freezing of its assets, in what Amnesty at the time called a “brazen attack on press freedom”.
Lai faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment if convicted. He has additionally been charged in the same case with “sedition”, which carries a maximum sentence of two years.
Hong Kong courts have already convicted Lai on four separate cases involving “unauthorized assemblies” and fraud and handed down prison sentences totaling over seven years.
Last month, Amnesty International recognized Lai as a prisoner of conscience alongside human rights lawyers Chow Hang-tung and Ding Jiaxi.