1,000 days behind bars: Unless Britain steps up, Jimmy Lai – my friend – could die in prison

Jimmy Lai, a 75-year-old entrepreneur, media proprietor and pro-democracy campaigner, has been in jail in Hong Kong for exactly 1,000 days. Yet he still has his most serious trial, under Hong Kong’s draconian National Security Law, to come. If convicted, he could face a life sentence. Unless something changes, Lai – my friend – could die in prison.

Lai is a British citizen, but the British government has still not called for his release. And while the Foreign Office minister for the Indo-Pacific, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, has met Lai’s son Sebastien three times, the prime minister and the foreign secretary have yet to agree to his request for a meeting.

When he visited Beijing last month, James Cleverly pointedly told the press he had explicitly raised Lai’s case. He also raised the case at the United Nations Human Rights Council in June. The government’s latest six-monthly report on Hong Kong cites the case. This is some welcome progress, given that for two years from the time of Lai’s arrest, when Cleverly’s predecessor Dominic Raab issued a statement, until the end of last year, the British government was silent. But even now, their response is muted, stopping short of demanding his freedom and limited simply to demanding consular access.

The sheer injustice of Lai’s imprisonment is an affront to anyone who believes in the rule of law, freedom of expression and press freedom. Among his supposed “crimes” are lighting a candle and saying a prayer at a vigil to commemorate the Tiananmen Square massacre, for which he has already served a 13-month sentence, and participating in a peaceful protest, for which he has served a 14-month prison term.

One of the most ludicrous sentences is a prison term of five years and nine months for a “lease violation”. He allegedly used an office in the building of the Apple Daily newspaper – which he founded and owned – and this was deemed to amount to “fraud”. One would have thought a newspaper proprietor could use his own publication’s building, but even if it was technically a lease violation, that should have been a civil dispute, not a criminal proceeding resulting in an almost six-year custodial sentence. The false fraud charge was clearly aimed at tarnishing the reputation of a courageous man of profound integrity.

In June 2021, over 300 police officers raided the Apple Daily’s newsroom and arrested its editor and five other executives, and the Hong Kong government froze the publishers’ assets, strangling the newspaper to death financially. Despite having enough funds to survive at least another 18 months, with its bank accounts frozen it was unable to pay staff, printers and electricity bills. Earlier this year, the Hong Kong government delisted Lai’s company, Next Digital, from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

At the heart of this case is a vengeful, cruel regime in Beijing, determined to lock away one of Hong Kong’s most internationally respected advocates of freedom. Ever since the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, Lai has been one of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s most outspoken critics, and through his publications he provided a platform for the promotion of democratic values in Hong Kong.

The CCP has retaliated not only by shutting down his newspaper, delisting his publishing business and imprisoning him, but also by delaying his trials, denying him the lawyer of his choice and threatening his international legal team. Beijing’s quislings in Hong Kong overruled the city’s top court earlier this year, ruling that his chosen counsel, British barrister Tim Owen KC, could not represent him. His international legal team led by Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC has received multiple threats. And his trial under the National Security Law has been repeatedly delayed, in an apparent effort to prolong the injustice.

Lai’s life-story epitomises Hong Kong’s spirit.

In 1959, aged 12, he arrived in Hong Kong as a stowaway on a boat, escaping dire poverty, famine and persecution in chairman Mao Zedong’s China. He worked as a child labourer in a garment factory, rose to become factory manager and then used his hard-earned bonuses to start his own business, founding the hugely successful Asia-wide clothing retailer, Giordano, and establishing other companies around the world.

With properties in London, Paris and Taiwan, businesses across the world and a British passport, Lai could have left Hong Kong at any point before his 2020 arrest – for a life of wealth, comfort, security and freedom. He chose to stay in Hong Kong, in the full expectation that he would be jailed, because he refused to capitulate to fear. The recipient of many international awards and honours, he is worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Over my three decades of human rights activism, I have had the privilege of meeting many courageous activists, dissidents and democracy campaigners in different parts of the world. None has impressed or inspired me more than Lai. Two words sum him up: freedom and faith. His profound commitment to liberty is motivated by his deep Catholic faith – and with that comes an extraordinary courage, humility and humanity that shines through to anyone who meets him.

I had the privilege of writing a weekly column for the English language online version of Apple Daily for the final year of its existence, and doing so was one of the greatest honours of my life. The editors told me I could write about any topic I wanted. They gave me no word count, and never edited or censored me. It is the only newspaper in the world which has ever given me such complete free rein. That was the spirit of Apple Daily. It was the spirit of Lai, who lives and breathes freedom, even now that he is incarcerated in a jail cell.

As we mark 1,000 days of Lai’s imprisonment, it is time for the British government to step up. The prime minister and foreign secretary must meet with Lai’s son Sebastien, who is also a British citizen, at the earliest opportunity. And they should move beyond simply “raising” Lai’s case and requesting consular access – welcome though those steps are – and publicly demand his release.

Anything less calls into question Britain’s commitment to democracy, the rule of law, media freedom and basic human rights, and its willingness to defend its own citizens in trouble with brutal dictatorships. Indeed, anything less is, as Sebastien said last week, “shameful”.

Benedict Rogers is a human rights activist and writer, co-founder and chief executive of Hong Kong Watch, deputy chair of the UK Conservative Party Human Rights Commission and author of ‘The China Nexus: Thirty Years In and Around the Chinese Communist Party’s Tyranny’ (Optimum Publishing International, 2022)