Jimmy Lai is a ‘hostage’, says daughter, as HK court issues 20-year sentence
Claire Lai told The Pillar that her father is treating his incarceration as a kind of “evangelization.”
After Catholic newspaper publisher Jimmy Lai was sentenced Monday to 20 years in prison, his daughter Claire Lai told The Pillar that her father is committed to treating his incarceration as a kind of “evangelization.”
Claire Lai added her family’s hope that international pressure on the Beijing Chinese government might eventually secure her father’s release.
Lai, who has been in prison since 2020, much of it spent in solitary confinement, was convicted in December of “seditious activity” under the terms of the National Security Law imposed on the Special Administrative Region by the mainland government in 2019.
The media magnate, who saw his company shuttered by state authorities in 2021, and with it Hong Kong’s last pro-democracy publication, Apple Daily, has repeatedly stressed the importance of his Catholic faith — both as inspiration for his championing for civil rights and as a sustaining force during his imprisonment.
Claire Lai told The Pillar after the announcement that the decades-long sentence was the latest discouragement after years of protracted legal processes for her father.
“There was part of me that wanted to be hopeful,” she said. “There was the other part of me that was a bit angry that we had to wait for five years for the purpose of due process when we knew the result and I just wanted my father back.”
Lai’s legal team in Hong Kong has 28 days to file for an appeal, but Claire Lai said she fears such a process could actually make it easier for the Chinese government to deflect criticism of the case.
“The ridiculousness of both the sentence and the verdict is such that there’s no legal basis for any of it,” she said. “And, at least in my personal opinion, it’s an attempt to push the defendants to appeal in order to let them keep saying it’s an ongoing process — but no one should fall for that. The ultimate arbiter of my father’s case is in Beijing. It’s not in Hong Kong. And now that he’s sentenced, all efforts should be made to move towards a political solution so that my father’s life can be saved.”
Lai founded Apple Daily in 1995, a news publication which became particularly critical of Hong Kong’s government in the wake of a controversial 2019 bill to extradite locals to the mainland for trial in political cases. The bill caused widespread protests and demonstrations, and Lai was arrested in 2020.
Apple Daily was one of the last pro-democracy newspapers in Hong Kong publicly critical of the erosion of civil liberties protected in Hong Kong’s Basic Law and expected to be guaranteed after the handover of the Hong Kong territory from the UK in 1997.
Six former Apple Daily staffers, and two human rights activists were also sentenced on Monday. Lai’s codefendants received jail sentences between six and 10 years.
The convicted journalists are publisher Cheung Kim-hung, associate publisher Chan Pui-man, editor-in-chief Ryan Law, executive editor-in-chief Lam Man-chung, executive editor-in-chief responsible for English news Fung Wai-kong and editorial writer Yeung Ching-kee.
Claire Lai told The Pillar that international diplomatic pressure is essential for there to be any hope of Lai’s release.
“Given my limited understanding of hostages and hostage release — which really that is what my father is at this point — you have to make the country holding the hostage feel the pain of that in order for him or her to be released,” she said. “And that is the only thing that can work at this point. You can’t seek redress in a system that’s broken and no one should be under any illusion that there’s still a rule of law in Hong Kong.”
Claire Lai said that her father’s continued incarceration is a political decision and, as such, could ultimately only be reversed by political authorities in Beijing.
International condemnation of the case has been widespread. After Lai’s sentence was announced on Monday, the UK foreign secretary Yvette Cooper said Lai was a victim of a “politically motivated prosecution,” while prime minister Keir Starmer has said he had raised Jimmy Lai’s case during his visit to China last month.
Rep. John Moolenaar (R-MI), chairman for the House Select Committee on China, said in a statement that if President Xi Jinping “wants to improve his relationship with the United States, freeing Jimmy Lai is where he needs to start.”
Meanwhile, the European Union’s foreign affairs spokesperson Anitta Hipper said that the EU “deplores” Lai’s sentencing and called for his “immediate and unconditional release.”
Hong Kong’s chief executive, John Lee, also a Catholic, said Lai’s crimes were “heinous and evil in the extreme.”
“[Lai’s] heavy sentence of 20 years’ imprisonment demonstrates the rule of law, upholds justice and is deeply gratifying,” Lee added in a statement.
According to Claire Lai, her father’s health has continued to deteriorate during his imprisonment, and she said his medical conditions underscore the urgency of securing his release.
“I’ve watched as health conditions that he previously suffered from are very poorly managed,” she said. “He’s been diabetic for over 20 years, actually pretty much 30 years. At first, his blood sugar was checked every day. Now it’s checked once every three weeks — if that — his eyesight has just gotten worse.”
The Pillar has previously reported that Lai also suffers from a deteriorating heart condition but has not been granted access to specialist medical care while in custody, instead only being allowed treatment from the prison’s standard medical team.
“It’s not because there hasn’t been a request for specialist care,” said Claire Lai. “The Brits have requested it. The UN has requested it. It has just been denied by the authorities.”
“I’ve also had to watch as he’s suffered from new conditions: his heart issues, his blood pressure issues. He gets infections because of his compromised immune system. He gets heat rashes every summer because it really bakes in the prison. His nails are turning colors and falling off. His teeth are rotting. And there are so many things that might just be just symptoms of something else that are just not properly checked. He now has an enlarged spleen. He has a blood disorder. But there’s been no follow-up, and that makes us extremely worried.”
Throughout his time in prison, Lai has continued to practice his Catholic faith, despite being given strictly limited access to visitors, including a priest. Nevertheless, his daughter said that he has been living his time in prison as a period of “evangelization,” even while in solitary confinement.
“It’s extremely important to him that he evangelizes as many people as he can [by example], and prays for others,” said Lai. “He’s spending his time in prison praying for other people.”
Claire Lai said Marian devotions and the rosary were especially important to her father, and to the family during his imprisonment.
“There is no better person to intercede on his behalf” than Mary, she said.
“There was one time when he was in the showers [and fell] and he couldn’t get up — this was right around the time we were trying to get a rosary into the jail for him but couldn’t — but he pretended as though he had a rosary in his hand and he prayed to the Blessed Mother, and suddenly he was able to get up,” she said. “And even sometimes when he has lightheadedness or things like that, he prays to the Blessed Mother and he prays to our good Lord and it makes it all better.”
“I think it’s things like that that remind me that, as much as physically I want to go in there and pull him out or at least give him a hug or things like that, it’s that ultimately as Catholics, what we want is, what we seek is salvation, not power,” said Lai. “And the comfort that he gets from our good Lord and the Blessed Mother is more comfort than I can physically provide him, but I just pray that ... I know that God will continue to provide him with the strength and persevering faith.
“I hope that, but I also know that God ultimately wants him to be free, but in His good time,” she said.
The sentence puts an end to Hong Kong’s most significant national security trial and a five-year legal saga.
Lai was convicted on Dec. 15 of multiple counts of seditious activity under the provisions of the National Security Law. The measure was imposed on the Special Administrative Region in the wake of widespread public protests against government plans to extradite Hong Kongers to the mainland for political crimes in 2019.
Lai has always said he is innocent of the charges of sedition and collusion with foreign powers on which he was tried and convicted, and insisted that he supported Hong Kong’s Basic Law and institutions while working as a newspaper publisher and journalist to cover the deteriorating state of civil liberties in the territory.
Lai’s case has been the subject of widespread international interest, and been seen as a show of strength by the Hong Kong authorities who, for the last six years, have taken increasingly punitive action against opposition voices, disbarring candidates from election, disbanding pro-democracy parties, and prosecuting prominent individuals like Lai and Cardinal Joseph Zen.
The charges against Lai included sedition, fomenting opposition to the local government in Hong Kong and on the mainland, and of soliciting foreign powers to act against the government.
While Lai insisted that he had not sought to bring international action against state officials, judges concluded that Lai’s writings were “objectively seditious and written with a view to bringing the HKSAR Government into hatred and contempt and to exciting disaffection against it.”
Since its imposition on Hong Kong by the mainland government, the National Security Law has been used to arrest and prosecute several prominent Catholic pro-democracy advocates, including Lai, as well as the emeritus bishop of Hong Kong, Cardinal Joseph Zen.
Jimmy Lai’s prosecution was, according to local observers, the latest regime message about the absolute policing of domestic dissent in Hong Kong.
In 2023, Bobo Yip, former chairwoman of the Diocese of Hong Kong’s Justice and Peace Commission, was also arrested on national security grounds. And in December of that year, Agnes Chow, the Catholic pro-democracy activist released from jail in 2021, announced she had fled into exile in Canada.
At the time of Lai’s initial arrest in December of 2020, Cardinal Zen called the move “obviously a case of political intimidation.”
“This is evidently all about political persecution,” Zen said in an interview at the time. “Jimmy Lai is obviously the one who runs the only newspaper which is still completely free.”
“So, there is a clear policy direction: suppress the freedom of expression,” said the cardinal.
With Lai’s conviction on Monday, many observers have concluded that the government’s suppression of free speech in Hong Kong has been absolutely established.
With figures like Zen retired from public life, and Agnes Chow and Simon Lee in exile, Lai’s was the last open case in the territory proving the effectiveness of the National Security Law and the government’s will to see it enforced.
In that security role, Lee was the prime mover of the failed 2019 bill to allow the extradition of political detainees from Hong Kong to stand trial on the mainland, despite the territory’s separate legal and judicial systems.
The bill triggered widespread protests, leading to a draconian police crackdown under Lee, and which were used by him to convince the mainland government to impose the 2020 National Security Law on the territory.
I've been listening to Fulton Sheen lately with news of his beatification coming up. I think we need to take his lead and make open contempt and criticism of communism popular in the West again. Granted, not many of us can do it as well as Sheen did but we can all do our part.
“Ultimately as Catholics, what we want is, what we seek is salvation, not power.” I’ll sit with that the rest of the night. Thank you for this interview!