Jimmy Lai convicted in national security trial

 

 

 

JIMMY Lai, the pro-democracy former Hong Kong media mogul and outspoken critic of Beijing, was convicted in a landmark national security trial in the city’s court on Monday, which could send him to prison for the rest of his life. Three government-vetted judges found Lai, 78, guilty of conspiring with others to collude with foreign forces to endanger national security and conspiracy to publish seditious articles. He pleaded not guilty to all charges. Lai was arrested in August 2020 under a Beijing-imposed national security law that was implemented following massive anti-government protests in 2019.

 

During his five years in custody, much of it in solitary confinement, Lai has been convicted of several lesser offences and appears to have grown more frail and thinner. Lai’s trial, conducted without a jury, has been closely monitored by the US, Britain, the European Union and political observers as a barometer of media freedom and judicial independence in the former British colony, which returned to Chinese rule in 1997. Reading from an 855-page verdict, Judge Esther Toh said that Lai had extended a “constant invitation” to the US to help bring down the Chinese government with the excuse of helping Hong Kongers.

 

Lai’s lawyers admitted during the trial that he had called for sanctions before the law took effect, but insisted he dropped these calls to comply with the law. But the judges ruled that Lai had never wavered in his intention to destabilise the ruling Chinese Communist Party, “continuing though in a less explicit way.” Toh said the court was satisfied that Lai was the mastermind of the conspiracies and that Lai’s evidence was at times contradictory and unreliable. The judges ruled that the only reasonable inference from the evidence was that Lai’s only intent, both before and after the security law, was to seek the downfall of the ruling Communist Party even at the sacrifice of the people of China and Hong Kong.

 

“This was the ultimate aim of the conspiracies and secessionist publications,” they wrote. Among the attendees were Lai’s wife and son, and Hong Kong’s Roman Catholic Cardinal Joseph Zen. Lai pressed his lips and nodded to his family before being escorted out of the courtroom by guards. His verdict is also a test for Beijing’s diplomatic ties. US President Donald Trump said he has raised the case with China, and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said his government has made it a priority to secure the release of Lai, who is a British citizen. The founder of the now-defunct pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily will be sentenced on a later day. The collusion charge carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. Hearings were set to begin Jan. 12 for Lai and other defendants in the case to argue for a shorter sentence.