Media mogul Jimmy Lai, founder of Apple Daily, in Hong Kong in May, 2020.Tyrone Siu/Reuters
Jimmy Lai, 78 and in poor health, was sentenced Monday to 20 years in prison for what in a democratic country is basic journalism but in China and Hong Kong is treated as a crime against the state.
His calculatingly punitive sentence ends, at least in the minds of Beijing’s leaders, the legal proceedings that began in 2020, when Mr. Lai was charged under the National Security Law imposed on Hong Kong.
But for Mr. Lai’s supporters, the sentence begins a new chapter: an all-out effort to push Beijing to show compassion for an aging man who fought, at great personal risk, to uphold the freedoms that China agreed to in 1997 under Hong Kong’s “one country, two systems” principle.
This is the moment for democracies, Canada included, to make clear that Mr. Lai will not be allowed to rot in prison, forgotten by the West, but will instead remain a constant diplomatic concern.
Beijing must come to understand that, should he die behind bars, Jimmy Lai will be remembered as an international martyr for the cause of freedom.
Jimmy Lai handed 20-year sentence in Hong Kong after conviction under national-security law
It will not be easy to secure his release. The political theatre of his incarceration, his lengthy trial on charges of sedition and colluding with foreign forces, and now what will effectively be a life sentence all serve a singular purpose for Beijing – to remind the Chinese people that dissent will be dealt with mercilessly.
Beijing is unlikely to show compassion for a man it portrays as the “mastermind” of a “colour revolution” – a term used to describe mass protest movements that it claims are foreign-backed attempts at regime change.
Its goal will be to outwait Mr. Lai’s family, his supporters and the governments – such as Canada, Britain and the United States – that have condemned his show trial and the sentence that was manufactured out of it.
China has done this before with other dissidents, most notably Liu Xiaobo.
Mr. Liu wrote searing critiques of the Chinese government after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 and was repeatedly arrested and imprisoned.
He was eventually charged in 2009 with “inciting subversion of state power,” tried in secret hearings and sentenced to 11 years in prison. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize while in prison, which merely hardened Beijing’s resolve. Mr. Liu was only allowed out of prison for medical reasons in 2017 after he was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer; he died less than two months later in hospital.
Mr. Liu was cremated and his ashes were scattered at sea, a move seen as Beijing’s attempt to prevent his tomb from becoming a shrine.
This, in stark terms, is the reality that Mr. Lai and his supporters now face. China under Xi Jinping has shown that it will harshly punish anyone who challenges the power of the Communist Party – even (and maybe especially) if they do so in Hong Kong, a place Beijing once promised would be allowed greater freedoms.
China could, if it wanted, send a message that it is willing to temper that power with mercy for Mr. Lai, who is diabetic and suffers from heart palpitations. But it will only do so if keeping him behind bars becomes a diplomatic irritant that outweighs any benefit it imagines his life sentence will bring.
The Chinese government is sensitive to the – accurate – charges that the rule of law has disintegrated in Hong Kong, a betrayal of its promise of “one country, two systems.” Releasing Mr. Lai would allow Beijing to claim that its legal system delivers justice, of a sort.
This is not the time to lose hope. China is enjoying a moment of thawing relations with countries like Canada, thanks to the U.S. President Donald Trump’s habit of estranging allies. That might, in the medium term, make it more open to diplomatic pressure, if Beijing judges that a compassionate release for Mr. Lai is in its strategic interest.
At the same time, Prime Minister Mark Carney recently said that Ottawa will “take the world as it is, not as we wish it to be,” and has unfrozen relations with Mr. Xi. Pragmatism can only extend so far; Canada would be going too far if it trades access to Chinese markets for silence about Mr. Lai’s inhumane and unjust sentence.
The message from Ottawa and other governments must be loud and clear: We will not forget Jimmy Lai, and we won’t let China forget him, either.