WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump, the State Department, and members of Congress expressed concern after Hong Kong’s prominent Catholic media tycoon and pro-democracy campaigner Jimmy Lai was convicted of national security offenses under the city’s controversial national security law.
“I feel so badly. I spoke to President Xi (Jinping) about it, and I asked (him) to consider his release,” Trump said Dec. 15 at the White House in response to a question on Lai’s conviction.
“He’s not well,” Trump said of Lai. “He’s an older man, and he’s not well. So I did put that request out. We’ll see what happens.”
In a Dec. 15 statement, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “The guilty verdict in Mr. Lai’s national security case reflects the enforcement of Beijing’s laws to silence those who seek to protect freedom of speech and other fundamental rights — rights that China pledged to uphold in the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration. Mr. Lai is not alone in facing punishment for defending these rights.”
“Reports indicate that Mr. Lai’s health has severely deteriorated during more than 1,800 days in prison,” Rubio added. “We urge the authorities to bring this ordeal to an end as soon as possible and to release Mr. Lai on humanitarian grounds.”
Lai, who founded the now-defunct pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, protested in favor of democratic freedoms — such as freedom of the press and expression — in Hong Kong, which was designated a Special Administrative Region of China in 1997, ending British rule of that area after more than 150 years. Following pro-democracy protests in 2019, China implemented a purported national security law the next year, which critics have said has been used to silence the Chinese Communist Party’s critics.
Under that law, Lai was arrested in August 2020 and has been imprisoned since December 2020. He pleaded not guilty to the charges before his Dec. 15 conviction. He faces life imprisonment.
U.S. lawmakers have called the charges Lai has now been convicted of trumped up, arguing they are evidence the Chinese Communist Party is seeking to silence dissent.
The state-run China Daily, an English-language propaganda arm of the Chinese Communist Party, argued Lai “crossed the line from journalism to subversion, from criticism to conspiracy, from protected speech to criminal conduct.”
But U.S. lawmakers rejected that characterization of the conviction.
“Jimmy Lai’s unjust conviction shows how much the totalitarian regime in Beijing fears free people and free speech,” Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the former Republican leader of the upper chamber, wrote on X. “I’ll continue to push for my friend’s release.”
“In the free world, we must remember that our values and strategic interests are often linked,” McConnell added, arguing China “threatens both.”
Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., co-chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, wrote on X, “Let’s call Jimmy Lai’s ‘trial’ what it is: a grave miscarriage of justice.”
“The Chinese government tries to extinguish press freedom in Hong Kong by jailing voices like his, but it will fail,” Merkley said. “The U.S. must continue to push for his release.”
