For many it was Jimmy Lai the last prominent advocate of a democratic Hong Kong to openly oppose China’s Communist Party. But in the eyes of the Beijing regime, the 78-year-old is above all a traitor. And the former newspaper publisher will now have to pay for this for the rest of his life.
On Monday morning, a Hong Kong court sentenced Lai to 20 years in prison. A punishment that “effectively amounts to a death sentence,” as Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, criticizes. At the same time, it is also the longest prison sentence to date under the national security law that the party leadership in Beijing imposed on the former British crown colony in the summer of 2020.
Lai’s offenses are “conspiring to cooperate with foreign forces” and “publishing seditious publications.” What the media mogul did in plain language would fall under freedom of the press in democratic states: This is what Lai said in his pro-democracy tabloid Apple Daily Publish articles and comments calling, among other things, for sanctions against the People’s Republic of China.
Politically, Lai can only expect limited help. It is unlikely that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will exert any real pressure, especially after his friendly visit to Beijing at the end of January. And Donald Trump had promised during his election campaign to get Lai out of prison. However, the US President is probably currently primarily concerned with not angering China’s ruler Xi Jinping before the planned summit meeting in Beijing in April.
Son of a rich family from China, then a boat refugee
The Lai case is also particularly tragic because of his personal life story: his once rich family, based in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, which borders Hong Kong, lost their belongings in the course of the communist revolution. As a desperately poor boat refugee, the then 12-year-old Lai fled to Hong Kong in the late 1950s, where he worked in textile factories.
Thanks to a fair amount of hard work, quick wit and fortunate circumstances, he worked his way up to become a factory owner and later built an Asian fashion empire with Giordano. But when the tanks of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army rolled into Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in June 1989 and gunned down the democracy movement, Lai dedicated his life to political activism: As a publisher, he was one of the toughest critics of the Communist Party and, as a multimillionaire, was probably the most important sponsor of the Hong Kong democracy movement.
However, Lai and his colleagues have lost the fight for a democratic Hong Kong for the foreseeable future. After hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong residents repeatedly demonstrated for more political participation in 2019, Beijing’s security authorities have hit back with full force since 2020: opposition parties were dissolved, critical newspapers were closed, libraries were cleaned and… countless democracy activists were sentenced to long prison sentences.
At least abroad, the critical voices of Chinese activists have not been silenced. “All I want to say to the Chinese Communist Party and its henchmen in Hong Kong is this: We will pursue you to the end, and we will win,” comments Chinese human rights expert Yaqiu Wang, currently a fellow at the University of Chicago: “Justice will prevail, and you will be held accountable!”
Alleged torture of prosecution witness Andy Li
Away from the media spotlight, verdicts were passed against eight other journalists and activists in Hong Kong on Monday, including Andy Li. The now 36-year-old took part in the 2019 pro-democracy protests. The following year, an arrest warrant was issued against him on the basis of the national security law that was introduced at the time. He was accused of having financed the “Fight for Freedom” organization he co-founded.
Li tried to flee to Taiwan by speedboat in a cloak-and-dagger operation, but was caught by China’s coast guard. He was allegedly tortured in a prison in Shenzhen, southern China. The Washington Post reported, citing seven different sources, that fellow inmates heard screams from Li’s cell “constantly.”
Apparently this was how the authorities managed to break Li. Contrary to his intention to stand up for his ideals in the event of arrest, he soon pleaded guilty and was also prepared to testify as a witness against Lai. “That’s what authoritarian societies do. They sow division and distrust, turning comrades against each other,” says Luke de Pulford, executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), a non-partisan international network of MPs that advocates for critical China policies.
In the end, Li’s collaboration with the security authorities was of little use. The judges sentenced him to seven years and three months in prison.