The trial of Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai (黎智英), who has been jailed for national security crimes, would serve as a “litmus test” for how China views the territory’s freedoms, his son said in an interview in Taipei.
The 75-year-old British citizen and founder of the now-shuttered Apple Daily has been behind bars in Hong Kong since 2020, awaiting trial for alleged “collusion with foreign forces.”
Initially scheduled to start a year earlier, Jimmy Lai’s trial has been postponed twice and is now slated for Dec.18. He was also denied his choice of legal representation, London-based lawyer Tim Owen.
Photo: Cheng I-Hwa, AFP
His son Sebastien Lai (黎崇恩) said the postponements and other legal obstacles made it clear that “it’s a kangaroo court.”
“My father’s case is ... an opportunity for Hong Kong to show whether they are actually rule-of-law compliant; whether they respect all the values they say they respect,” the 29-year-old said.
The world “should be paying attention to my father’s case, to the case of Hong Kong,” he said.
“Hong Kong has always been a litmus test for how China views the world and how they view the liberties that we have in the free world. Now, my father stood really at the front of that,” Sebastien Lai said. “He’s a man who decided to sacrifice everything that he has for these ideals of freedom ... so how the Hong Kong government treats my father is how the whole government views these freedoms.”
While awaiting trial for collusion, Jimmy Lai has been sentenced for attending four pro-democracy protests and for an additional charge of “fraud” — convictions that together came with sentences of more than seven years.
The Hong Kong government in March hit out at Sebastien Lai for bringing his father’s case to the UN, calling it “foreign interference” with the territory’s judicial proceedings.
If convicted, Jimmy Lai faces up to life in prison under the National Security Law Beijing imposed on Hong Kong in 2020. The law’s aim was to quash dissent following massive, and at times violent, pro-democracy demonstrations in 2019, which brought hundreds of thousands to the streets to demand greater freedoms for the territory.
In the three years since the law’s passage, prominent opposition lawmakers and democracy activists have either been jailed or fled abroad, and Hong Kong’s once-vibrant civil society is now a shadow of its former self.
“I think he’d be very heartbroken [by the current state of Hong Kong], but dad always looks forward,” Sebastien Lai said.
Born in China, Jimmy Lai was smuggled into Hong Kong at the age of 12 and worked in sweatshops before he founded a hugely successful clothing empire. He started Apple Daily in 1995, a tabloid that mixed heady sensationalism with hard-hitting political reportage.
An early advertisement for Apple Daily — of many yellowed clippings Sebastien Lai has saved in his Taipei home — shows Jimmy Lai perched on a motorcycle and beaming as he holds up a crimson apple.
The paper openly backed Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement in 2019, and Jimmy Lai was labeled a “traitor” by China’s state media. Six staff members were also detained and pleaded guilty to collusion. They face possible life imprisonment under the security law.
Today, Jimmy Lai is “the oldest political prisoner in Hong Kong,” said Sebastien Lai, adding that the UK has yet to call for his father’s release.
“It’s so important that they do that, because my father is a British citizen... He has fought to uphold the promise that the UK and China made to the people of Hong Kong during the handover,” he said.
Showing an old photograph enclosed in a faded Disney frame of his father looking at him, Sebastien Lai said his father “always let us pursue whatever we wanted to pursue.”
“I have to be optimistic” about the upcoming trial, he said. “This is a long fight, but it’s not one that I would shy away from.”
An undersea cable to Penghu County has been severed, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said today, with a Chinese-funded ship suspected of being responsible. It comes just a month after a Chinese ship was suspected of severing an undersea cable north of Keelung Harbor. The National Communications and Cyber Security Center received a report at 3:03am today from Chunghwa Telecom that the No. 3 cable from Taiwan to Penghu was severed 14.7km off the coast of Tainan, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said. The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) upon receiving a report from Chunghwa Telecom began to monitor the Togolese-flagged Hong Tai (宏泰)
A cat named Mikan (蜜柑) has brought in revenue of more than NT$10 million (US$305,390) for the Kaohsiung MRT last year. Mikan, born on April 4, 2020, was a stray cat before being adopted by personnel of Kaohsiung MRT’s Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station. Mikan was named after a Japanese term for mandarin orange due to his color and because he looks like an orange when curled up. He was named “station master” of Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station in September 2020, and has since become famous. With Kaohsiung MRT’s branding, along with the release of a set of cultural and creative products, station master Mikan
RISING TOURISM: A survey showed that tourist visits increased by 35 percent last year, while newly created attractions contributed almost half of the growth Changhua County’s Lukang Old Street (鹿港老街) and its surrounding historical area clinched first place among Taiwan’s most successful tourist attractions last year, while no location in eastern Taiwan achieved a spot in the top 20 list, the Tourism Administration said. The listing was created by the Tourism Administration’s Forward-looking Tourism Policy Research office. Last year, the Lukang Old Street and its surrounding area had 17.3 million visitors, more than the 16 million visitors for the Wenhua Road Night Market (文化路夜市) in Chiayi City and 14.5 million visitors at Tainan’s Anping (安平) historical area, it said. The Taipei 101 skyscraper and its environs —
Taiwan on Friday said a New Zealand hamburger restaurant has apologized for a racist remark to a Taiwanese customer after reports that it had first apologized to China sparked outrage in Taiwan. An image posted on Threads by a Taiwanese who ate at Fergburger in Queenstown showed that their receipt dated Sunday last week included the words “Ching Chang,” a racial slur. The Chinese Consulate-General in Christchurch in a statement on Thursday said it had received and accepted an apology from the restaurant over the incident. The comment triggered an online furor among Taiwanese who saw it as an insult to the
RSS