The Chinese Foreign Ministry declared media mogul Jimmy Lai a “mastermind” of the 2019 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong on Monday, apparently ruling him guilty on the same day that his trial for alleged “sedition” began.
Lai, 76, has been trapped in a maximum-security prison in Hong Kong since 2020 for coverage of the pro-democracy movement in the now-defunct Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily, which the communist regime forced to shut down in 2021. Lai personally attended peaceful assemblies against the Chinese communist takeover of Hong Kong at the time and has for years vocally opposed communism. He is also a vocal Christian and member of the Catholic Church, who said publicly in 2020 that he would not flee Hong Kong’s legal process.
“If I go away, I not only give up my destiny, I give up God, I give up my religion, I give up what I believe in,” he said in an interview at the time.
Cardinal Joseph Zen, the 91-year-old Catholic leader who baptized Lai, attended the first day of the trial on Monday.
91-year-old #CardinalZen was among those who attended the start of #JimmyLai's trial on Monday. Zen regularly visits #PoliticalPrisoners & is himself still technically "under investigation" in another "national security" case & barred from leaving #HongKong. pic.twitter.com/Ml3Fara406
— Hong Kong Democracy Council (@hkdc_us) December 18, 2023
Millions of people participated in anti-communist protests in Hong Kong throughout 2019 in response to the Communist Party attempting to pass a law that would allow China to extradite anyone present in Hong Kong if accused of violating China’s draconian laws, which include punishments for “crimes” such as “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” and political dissent generally. At their peak, the protests attracted 2 million of the then-autonomous region’s 7 million residents.
China responded by brutalizing protesters in public, beating and disappearing prominent dissidents, and passing a “national security” law in 2020 that effectively ended the “One Country, Two Systems” policy, which in theory bars China from imposing communist laws on Hong Kong. Lai is facing a potential lifetime in prison – at least ten years – on multiple charges of “seditious” behavior, including “conspiracy to print, publish, sell, offer for sale, distribute, display, or reproduce seditious publications.”
The Chinese government, through its Hong Kong puppets, has denied Lai a trial by jury, instead empaneling special pro-regime judges to look at the evidence. Lai’s legal defense team is arguing the court should dismiss the case because prosecutors failed to charge Lai within the statute of limitations for the violations he is alleged to have committed, but few analysts expect the court not to find Lai guilty, anyway.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin, taking questions about Lai on Monday and Tuesday, also treated Lai as guilty before proven innocent.
“Jimmy Lai is a major mastermind and participant of the anti-China riots in Hong Kong. He is an agent and pawn of the anti-China forces, and the person behind the riots in Hong Kong,” Wang told reporters on Monday. “What he did was detrimental to Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability and the wellbeing of the people in Hong Kong.”
In the same answer, he asserted that Hong Kong’s legal system was handling the case appropriately and condemned Western governments that publicly decried the media mogul’s arrest as “irresponsible” and “politically motivated.”
“Hong Kong follows the rule of law, any law in Hong Kong must be observed and those who break the law must be held accountable. Jimmy Lai is a major mastermind and participant of the anti-China riots in Hong Kong,” Wang repeated on Tuesday, asked about complaints from human rights activists in America and the United Kingdom, where Lai is a citizen, about the sham trial.
The Chinese state-run newspaper Global Times openly described Lai as a “secessionist” in its coverage of the sham trial on Monday, even though the trial, nominally to determine if Lai was a “secessionist,” had just begun. The outlet then quoted Chinese regime-approved “legal experts” who claimed, laughably, that China does not engage in political persecution.
“I think the US and the West have double standards, because Hong Kong relies on the rule of law. Since someone has violated the law, they must be punished,” a regime-approved “expert,” former Chinese lawmaker Tam Yiu-chung, told the Global Times, again declaring Lai guilty without a trial.
On the same day that the trial began, the Communist Party’s handpicked chief executive of Hong Kong, John Lee, met with genocidal Chinese dictator Xi Jinping in Beijing, where the latter reportedly praised his iron-fisted repression in the formerly capitalist region.
“[Hong Kong] has maintained the region’s distinctive status and advantages, bolstered the drivers for development and worked hard to solve the most pressing issues and difficulties of the people,” Xi reportedly said in his meeting with Lee, praising Hong Kong’s “new stage” of “order” following the silencing of pro-democracy voices.
Xi, according to Chinese state media, “held high expectations for the HKSAR [Hong Kong] to further advance the governance by patriots [and] to continue the job of safeguarding national security.”
