HONG KONG — Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai is set to be sentenced Monday after his conviction in a landmark national security trial that has drawn international attention and become a symbol of Beijing’s crackdown on dissent in the Chinese territory.
Lai, a 78-year-old media tycoon who was one of the most prominent critics of China’s ruling Communist Party, faces possible life in prison. The case has been criticized by the U.S. and other governments as politically motivated and a sign of shrinking space for dissent in Hong Kong, a former British colony that returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
“The eyes of the world will be on Hong Kong,” Aleksandra Bielakowska of Reporters Without Borders, a press freedom advocacy group, said in a statement Friday. “The outcome will resonate far beyond Jimmy Lai himself, sending a decisive signal about the future of press freedom in the territory.”
Rights groups and members of Lai’s family have also expressed concern about his health after spending more than 1,800 days in custody, much of it in solitary confinement. Hong Kong officials say Lai has received appropriate medical care and that he had requested to be kept separate from other prisoners.
Lai was arrested and charged in 2020, shortly after Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law in response to months of anti-government protests the previous year. Hong Kong authorities say the law was necessary to restore stability after the protests, which sometimes turned violent, and that Lai’s case has nothing to do with press freedom.
The case has drawn scrutiny from foreign leaders including President Donald Trump, who had vowed to secure Lai’s release and said he felt “so badly” after Lai was convicted in December on charges of sedition and colluding with foreign forces. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing last month, also said he had raised the issue of Lai, who is a British citizen.
Hong Kong officials have defended the independence of the local judicial system, which is separate from that of mainland China, and accused foreign governments of interfering in internal affairs. Chief Justice Andrew Cheung, Hong Kong’s top judge, said in a speech last month that calls for Lai’s premature release “strike at the very heart of the rule of law itself.”
Lai — the founder of Apple Daily, a popular pro-democracy tabloid that was forced to shut down in 2021 — was convicted on one charge of conspiring to publish seditious articles and two charges of conspiring to lobby foreign governments to impose sanctions, blockades or other hostile measures against China and Hong Kong.
In their 855-page verdict, the three handpicked judges cited Lai’s interactions with senior U.S. government officials, including meetings he had at the height of the 2019 protests with Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, national security adviser John Bolton and multiple members of Congress.
Lai pleaded not guilty to all charges. Also being sentenced in the case on Monday are six former Apple Daily journalists and two activists, some of whom testified against Lai, and all of whom pleaded guilty in the hope of receiving reduced sentences.
Lai had already been convicted separately on a number of lesser charges including fraud and unlawful assembly. In December 2022, he was sentenced to five years and nine months in prison in the fraud case.
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