This is the best summary I could come up with:
Unlike most other inmates, who play football or exercise in groups, Lai walks alone in what appears to be a 5-by-10-meter (16-by-30-foot) enclosure surrounded by barbed wire under Hong Kong’s punishing summer sun before returning to his unairconditioned cell in the prison.
The publisher of the now-defunct Apple Daily newspaper, Lai disappeared from public view in December 2020 following his arrest under a security law imposed by Beijing to crush a massive pro-democracy movement that started in 2019 and brought hundreds of thousands onto the streets.
In a separate case, an appeals court is due to rule Monday on a challenge that Lai and six other activists have had filed against their conviction and sentencing on charges of organizing and taking part in an unauthorized assembly nearly four years ago.
He was scheduled to go on trial last December, but it was postponed to September while the Hong Kong government appealed to Beijing to block his attempt to hire a British defense lawyer.
“My father is in prison because he spoke truth to power for decades,” Lai’s son, Sebastien, said in a May statement to a U.S. government panel, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China.
Lai, who suffers from diabetes and was diagnosed with high blood pressure in 2021 while in detention, is treated as a Category A prisoner, a status for inmates who have committed the most serious crimes such as murder.
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The British lawyer might have more relevant training among western lawyers depending on how old he is and if he dealt with old HK law. One needs to conclude that either no HK lawyer is willing to take the case (perhaps due to fear of retribution) or the westerners think it would be a bad move (for example, if a HK lawyer simply tells the truth to Congress and does not get punished back in HK). I’m just speculating, though.
Jimmy lai, pro democracy, smell like three letter agency.
Certainly not CCP considering he is pro-democracy. 🙂
CCP
Who? Communist Party of Canada?
What did we do, lend him our last printing press? 🤣
Back to your point about abuse, though,
… except you don’t. Trial by jury is a decent system that decouples justice from political power. In this case, the politicians decided that was an inconvenience and did away with it.
What we should be worried about it is actual abuses, not potential abuses.
Agreed. This was an actual abuse.
What is the context behind this?
2019 HK protests and CCP’s crackdown on its free press.
I know that, what did this guy actually do?
It’s in the headline: “pro-democracy publisher”.
He was a newspaper publisher in Hong Kong who refused to get in line. That’s all.
He was accused of collaborating with foreign actors.
That IS illegal.
What did he actually do though?
Literally ran a newspaper which espoused democracy and independent governance (Hong Kong status quo at the time).
You might also be interested to learn that democratically elected legislators in Hong Kong were arrested en masse from the floor of their legislative building for the exact same reason. It’s as bad as it sounds.
Link me that information from any source that actually reports on it fully. I’m just trying to understand what actually happened there.
He published newspapers. He was a newspaper publisher.
There’s no free speech in China. Publishing a newspaper that doesn’t follow the line of the Chinese Communist Party is a crime, and after the CCP took control over Hong Kong that applied to him as well.
You could get arrested (rightfully and not) in most of the world for publishing a myriad of things while still calling yourself “pro democracy” (see jan. 6 protests in the US)
I just wanted to know what he was actually saying to motivate this arrest…
The Jan 6 people were not arrested for publishing a newspaper.
The arrest itself was actually “motivated” by what they referred to as unauthorised assembly during the pro-democracy protests. This 73 year old man went somewhere he shouldn’t have, and clearly threatened the mighty CCP enough to warrant 20 months in prison in the process. Additional charges up to life are being stacked on top following from the “security law” meant to silence pro-democracy voices in Hong Kong, but as far as I know these charges have not been made public. His newspaper was published daily though, so the nature of his crime was quite public if you’re really interested.
Here’s a BBC story on the history of the newspaper.
I’m sorry I couldn’t find anything published by Xinhua News Agency, I have a feeling you might have appreciated that more.
We will never know the details of the charges, because all the legal proceedings will be secret, which is the standard in China.
Someone below posted the charges btw.
Not seeing any evidence of public court proceedings in this thread.
Did not kiss Winnie the Pooh’s ass.
Do not kiss Uncle Sam’s ass. I’m not about to believe anything based on hearsay.
He ran a prominen newspaper called Daily Apple, which was shut down by the government.
Looks like he’s in prison for 2 years on shakey, but mostly self acknowledged fraud charges, and also facing new charges detailed in another comment below.
