Jimmy Lai during an interview with AFP at the Next Digital offices in Hong Kong on June 16, 2020.ANTHONY WALLACE/Getty Images
Sebastien Lai is the son of Jimmy Lai and leads the international campaign to free his father.
In 2020, the Hong Kong government accused my father, Jimmy Lai, of charges under China’s national security law, including “colluding with foreign forces” and sedition. The truth is much less convoluted. For almost three decades, my father published Apple Daily, the city’s largest pro-democracy newspaper, and was one of Beijing’s most outspoken and dauntless critics.
For this, the authorities are putting on an elaborate show to discredit and silence him.
On Monday morning, when his sham trial finally began after more than 1,000 days of pre-trial detention, sniffer dogs patrolled the street outside of West Kowloon Court, and police officers deployed to secure the area – 1,000 of them, according to reports – scanned passing cars for bombs. Law enforcement dwarfed both press presence and the crowd queueing to witness the trial. Local media have reported that the same show of force will be deployed every day for the duration of my father’s 80-day trial.
The tight security, like the trial itself, is a co-ordinated performance to paint him as a dangerous man. But, in reality, it betrays something else: how terrified tyranny is of defiance, and how insecure Beijing and its puppets are in the face of a man who stands up for freedom and speaks truth to power, whatever the cost may be.
My father turned 76 years old earlier this month. It was his third birthday behind bars – yet another year we cannot celebrate with him. I have not seen or heard my father’s voice since 2020. The cost of my father’s decision to stay in Hong Kong and stand up to tyranny could be that I never will again.
But he understood that the cost of not standing up for human rights and dignity – of bowing to a dictatorship, instead – is even more dire. He named his newspaper Apple Daily in reference to the forbidden fruit of the Bible that revealed the knowledge of good and evil. Like the apple, his newspaper delivered the truth about China, and by doing so, poked holes in the regime’s lies.
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My father understood the truth of living in an autocracy. He fled the hunger and deprivation of Communist China in the 1960s, and as a 12-year-old on his own in Hong Kong, he carved a life for himself – first as a factory worker, and later as a clothing and media entrepreneur. To this day, he remains deaf in one ear from his years spent working the thundering factory machinery from a young age. He used to tell us that despite the hardships of being a child labourer, he never felt poor, because the freedoms he found in Hong Kong granted him the opportunity to live and thrive. He knew that without these freedoms, he had nothing.
The outcome of his trial is already predetermined. There is no jury – only a panel of three judges hand-picked by the government. The city’s security minister has boasted of a 100-per-cent conviction rate for national security charges. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson last week called my father “one of the most notorious anti-China elements.” Before his trial has even begun, Beijing has already decided he is guilty.
But Hong Kong authorities must also be aware of the cost of perverting the city’s legal system to incriminate my father. The international community is watching closely. Last week, in a moving show of solidarity, Canada’s Parliament and Senate unanimously called for his release; Britain, of which my father is a citizen, has closely followed suit.
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My father is not the one being put on trial. What is on the stand is his dismantled newspaper, the values it championed, and the millions of readers that believed in their right to have a say in the future of their home.
But ultimately, how Hong Kong’s court rules will only be an indictment of Hong Kong. The outcome of this show trial will reveal to the world what it thinks of free speech, the free press and other fundamental rights that underpin the rule of law. The city’s global reputation and its place as an international financial centre will hinge on the decision.
Sixty-four years after landing on its shores, my father is now in court defending the freedoms Hong Kong gave him as a child. The Chinese Communist Party has again caught up with him, but this time he has refused to flee. It is now up to those who enjoy these freedoms across the world to remind Hong Kong that the pursuit of freedom is not a crime.