US lawmakers moved Tuesday to rename the street next to Hong Kong’s Washington office after Jimmy Lai, the pro-democracy media owner jailed as China clamps down in the financial hub.
A bill introduced in the House of Representatives would erect the street sign “Jimmy Lai Wai” on a stretch alongside the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in Washington’s bustling Dupont Circle area.
“We want to remind every HKETO employee of their part in dismantling the freedoms that once made Hong Kong the most vibrant and prosperous city in Asia,” said Representative Chris Smith, the Republican co-chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, which examines rights in the country.
There was no immediate timetable to act upon the proposal, but it was co-sponsored by Democrats.
While Congress has less jurisdiction outside of Washington, the bill would also direct the US Postal Service to deliver mail to Hong Kong’s offices in New York and San Francisco if they are addressed to “1 Jimmy Lai Way” in either city.
Lai was the founder of the Apple Daily, a now-shuttered Chinese-language newspaper that championed mass demonstrations in 2019 aimed at safeguarding democratic liberties promised when Beijing took control of the former British colony.
China quelled dissent after the protests, some of which involved vandalism, including through a tough security law.
Lai, now 77, has been behind bars since December 2020.
He testified for more than 50 days, concluding last month, as he fights charges of foreign collusion under the law that could carry a sentence of life in prison.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a recent interview said that Lai’s case was a “priority” for him.
Renaming streets has long been a means to embarrass countries on their rights records.
Russia’s embassy in Washington lies on Boris Nemtsov Plaza, named for the reformist politician killed near the Kremlin in 2015, and the Saudi embassy is on Jamal Khashoggi Way, named for the dissident writer who was strangled to death and dismembered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.
But an effort to name the plaza outside of China’s embassy for Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Prize-winning writer and democracy activist who died in prison, floundered after intense opposition from Beijing.
Other governments have sometimes acted similarly with the United States. The US consulate in Kolkata is named for Vietnamese revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh.
