Jimmy Lai, the Catholic entrepreneur who is being tried in a Hong Kong court on national security charges, said in trial that he never tried to influence the foreign policy of the US and other governments with regard to China.
Lai, one of several Hong Kong pro-democracy activists facing harsher laws imposed by Beijing on the former British colony, has pleaded not guilty to two charges of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and a charge of conspiracy to publish seditious material.
The newspaper he founded, Apple Daily, was shut down by the Hong Kong government in 2020.
During the trial it was alleged that Lai and others had requested an organization or foreign country, chiefly the United States, "to impose sanctions or blockade, or engage in other hostile activities" on the Hong Kong and Beijing governments, Reuters reported.
“One example of Lai's alleged collusion was meetings in July 2019 with then-U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to discuss the political crisis in Hong Kong as mass pro-democracy and anti-China protests intensified,” the wire service said. “Under oath in court on Wednesday, Lai denied asking anything specific of Pence.”
"I would not dare to ask the vice president to do anything," Lai told the court. “I would just relay to him what happened in Hong Kong when he asked me.”
Guiding principles
Lai told the court how his principles were aligned through his newspaper with the people of Hong Kong: a belief in the rule of law and freedoms including those of speech, religion, and assembly, Reuters said.
Born in Guangzhou, China, on December 8, 1947, Lai escaped from communist China at the age of 12, slipping into Hong Kong as a stowaway on a boat. He worked in a garment factory for the equivalent of $8 a month, but eventually rose to the position of factory manager.
In 1975, he had enough assets to purchase a bankrupt garment factory, where he began producing sweaters. Customers included J.C. Penney, Montgomery Ward, and other U.S. retailers. Out of this developed the Asia-wide retailer Giordano.
He turned his attention to media and politics in the 1990s, however, as Great Britain was preparing to hand over Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China in 1997. It was around the end of that British period that Lai, guided by Cardinal Joseph Zen of Hong Kong, came into the Church.
The 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre prompted Lai’s advocacy of democracy and criticism of the Beijing government. He began publishing Next Magazine and Apple Daily, which had a circulation of 400,000 by 1997. Lai said he hoped the newspaper would help maintain freedom of speech in Hong Kong.
Arrest
On February 28, 2020, Lai was arrested for illegal assembly during his attendance in the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests. While awaiting trial, he was among 15 high-profile democracy figures arrested on April 18, 2020, on suspicion of organizing, publicizing, or taking part in several unauthorized assemblies between August and October 2019.
On June 30, 2020, China's parliament by-passed Hong Kong’s Legislative Council to enact the Hong Kong national security law. Before the law was enacted, Lai called it "a death knell for Hong Kong" and alleged that it would destroy the territory's rule of law.
One of the crimes specified by the law was “collusion with foreign forces,” and on August 10, 2020, Lai was arrested for this new “crime.” The same day, about 200 Hong Kong police officers raided the offices of Apple Daily, seizing around 25 boxes of materials. The bank HSBC took steps to freeze Lai’s bank account.
The main evidence for the charges of collusion consisted of statements Lai had made on Twitter. He was accused of using the social media site, now known as X, and other media to request foreign sanctions against Hong Kong and mainland Chinese officials.
While awaiting trial, he was convicted on April 1, 2021, on the "unlawful assembly" charge from the 2019 protests. He was sentenced to 14 months in prison. He continued to receive sentences for similar illegal assemblies and involvement in candlelight vigils on the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
In August 2022, Lai pleaded not guilty to the charges related to "collusion with foreign forces.” He was disallowed from using a British lawyer. In December of that year he was convicted on a separate fraud case and sentenced to five years and nine months.
Last year, Lai and the other six activists partially won their appeal at a lower court, with their convictions of organizing an unauthorized assembly suppressed. But their convictions over taking part in the assembly were upheld, and they continued their legal battle at the city’s top court, The Associated Press reported. They lost that appeal in August.
