Media tycoon Jimmy Lai has been held in solitary confinement for more than four years. He is trial for violating a Beijing-imposed national-security law.Tyrone Siu/Reuters
MPs are expected to vote on a motion Wednesday calling on the government to grant jailed Hong Kong businessman Jimmy Lai honorary Canadian citizenship, in a renewed bid to convince the authorities in Hong Kong to release him from custody.
Mr. Lai has spent four-and-a-half years in solitary confinement and is on trial for violating a Beijing-imposed national-security law that critics say is emblematic of the erosion of rights and freedoms in the former British colony.
Mr. Lai, a British citizen and publisher of the former pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper, was arrested in Hong Kong on conspiracy and sedition charges in December, 2020. He was denied bail and a jury trial. Apple Daily was closed six months later, with other top executives arrested.
Mr. Lai’s son Sebastien joined MPs from all parties in Ottawa on Tuesday as they voiced their support for a unanimous consent motion calling on the federal government to grant Mr. Lai honorary citizenship, a rarely awarded symbolic honour.
Liberal MP Judy Sgro said she plans to table the motion in the Commons on Wednesday and that she is confident it will pass.
She told The Globe and Mail it is “critically important that we as Canadian parliamentarians do everything we can to help someone wrongfully accused,” saying Mr. Lai had been in tortuous conditions for four and a half years.
She made a statement in the Commons on Tuesday making the case for granting Mr. Lai honorary citizenship, which has only ever been awarded to seven people, including Nelson Mandela, Pakistani education and women’s rights activist Malala Yousafzai, and the Dalai Lama.
Opinion: Canada needs to be clear: Free Jimmy Lai
Former justice minister Irwin Cotler, international chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, said the award would afford Mr. Lai additional protection, and demonstrate that Canada stands in solidarity with him.
At a press conference with MPs and Senators on Tuesday, Mr. Cotler said Mr. Lai’s incarceration is a “case study in the criminalization of innocence.”
He said on the eve of the G7 leaders’ summit in Alberta, which begins this weekend, the aim is to “mobilize the international community in the shared defence of his rights.”
Sebastien Lai raised concerns about the health of his 77-year-old father, who has diabetes, and the solitary conditions in which he is being held in Stanley Prison, a maximum-security facility.
“My father has given everything he has to stand up for values Canada holds dear: democracy and freedom of the press. I hope Canada will now work with its G7 partners to secure his freedom and bring him home to his family,” he said in a statement.
Sebastien said at a press conference that the fact that his father had stayed in Hong Kong “in the face of oppression” showed his courage, but that if he were released he would likely come to Canada, where many of their family members, including Mr. Lai’s twin sister, live. He suggested he would also visit Britain where they have family.
Mr. Lai owns 12 hotels and 20 restaurants and spas in southern Ontario, as well as significant real estate in Canada. Local Conservative MP Tony Baldinelli said his properties are “a significant driver of local tourism in Niagara on the Lake.”
Immigration Minister Lena Diab was asked if she would grant Mr. Lai honorary citizenship on Monday by NDP MP Jenny Kwan in the Commons.
Ms. Kwan, who was born in Hong Kong, said Hong Kong’s national-security law had stripped people of their basic rights.
The law contains vaguely defined offences that Amnesty International has said mean “virtually anything could be deemed a threat.”
“Those who dared to speak up and to fight against this were persecuted. Jimmy Lai is one of those individuals. He dared to speak truth to power,” Ms. Kwan said.
She said Mr. Lai must be released if “the Chinese government values their reputation in any way, shape or form.”
Some MPs and supporters of Mr. Lai want the government to go further, and grant him full Canadian citizenship.
Opinion: The Jimmy Lai case has all the makings of a sham trial
Caoilfhionn Gallagher, lead international counsel for Mr. Lai, said at the press conference action was needed not just “to secure Jimmy Lai’s liberty, but also to save his life, because what he faces is a life sentence. In reality, a death sentence, simply for speaking truth to power.”
She told The Globe and Mail that granting honorary citizenship to Mr. Lai could greatly improve his chances of release, citing the example of Russian dissident and pro-democracy leader Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was granted honorary Canadian citizenship by unanimous consent in June, 2023, and released from Russian prison last year.
In 2023, the House of Commons and Senate passed unanimous consent motions urging Mr. Lai’s release.
Mr. Lai has pleaded not guilty to the charges he is facing. But prosecutors have tried to paint him as the architect of widespread anti-government protests that rocked Hong Kong in 2019, and accused him of leading a campaign to get foreign governments to sanction Hong Kong and Chinese officials.
A crackdown on civil rights has eroded the territory’s previous political and social freedoms, which were unique in China – a legacy of Hong Kong’s years under British control. Hong Kong was handed over to the People’s Republic of China in 1997 by Britain. Critics say the 2020 national-security law effectively criminalizes dissent and opposition.
During his trial in February, Mr. Lai was asked about a 2020 op-ed in which he predicted doom for Hong Kong ahead of Beijing’s imposition of the national-security law. Mr. Lai said, “All has come to pass.”
With a report from Steven Chase