Hong Kong CNN –
Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai, known for his support of the city's democracy movement and his criticism of China's leaders, turned 76 earlier this month and is behind bars in a maximum security prison.
He has been in custody since 2020 and is imprisoned on multiple charges related to Hong Kong's pro-democracy protest movement and his media business, including as the founder of Apple Daily, a pro-democracy, anti-Beijing newspaper that was forced to close in 2021.
Long a brazenly combative thorn in Beijing's side, Lai now faces his most consequential legal challenge yet.
He appeared in court on Monday to face the third day of the trial According to an indictment seen by CNN, the charges include one count of colluding with foreign forces, a crime under a sweeping national security law that has transformed Hong Kong, and a separate count of sedition. If convicted, he could face life in prison.
Dressed in a blue shirt and gray suit, a noticeably thinner Lai waved and smiled at his supporters as he entered the courtroom accompanied by four officers at the start of a trial that is being closely watched around the world. There was a heavy police presence outside the courthouse.
The trial – expected to last at least 80 days – is the most high-profile prosecution of a Hong Kong media figure since the city's handover from British to Chinese control in 1997. And it could quickly set new precedents for Hong Kong's changing legal landscape.
Since huge and sometimes violent democracy protests took place in Hong Kong in 2019, dozens of the city's most prominent democracy activists have been jailed or fled abroad.
But few enjoy the kind of international recognition that Lai does.
Prosecutors allege that the articles published by Lai's newspaper Apple Daily violated Hong Kong's national security law by calling for foreign sanctions against the city's leaders. Lai has pleaded not guilty.
Beijing enacted the national security law in the wake of the 2019 protests, arguing it had “restored stability” and closed loopholes that allowed “foreign forces” to undermine China.
Critics say it has dented Hong Kong's freedoms and changed the city's legal landscape.
Like all previous national security cases, the high-profile trial will have no jury and will be presided over by three national security judges from a panel approved by Hong Kong's leader. Hong Kong's courts allow foreign lawyers from other common law jurisdictions to represent clients, but the government has blocked Lai from being represented by a leading British human rights lawyer, a decision that is the subject of a separate legal challenge that marks the start of that process repeatedly delayed.
Little has been heard from Lai, once one of the city's most outspoken figures, since his multiple prosecutions began.
“I think he is very strong psychologically,” his son Sebastien Lai recently told CNN in London. “But there is always the element that no one escapes the gravity of old age, and at his age he is at enormous risk of being in maximum security.”
Lai's son met with British Foreign Secretary David Cameron last week to lobby for the release of his father – who is also a British citizen – after a series of similar campaigns in the US and Canada.
On the eve of the trial, Cameron said he was “deeply concerned” about the case and joined the United States' call for Lai to be released.
“A prominent and outspoken journalist and publisher, Jimmy Lai was targeted to prevent the peaceful exercise of his rights to freedom of expression and association,” Cameron said in a statement.
The US State Department also called on Hong Kong authorities to “immediately release Jimmy Lai and all others detained for defending their rights.”
Chinese authorities have condemned Western criticism of Lai's prosecution and repeated the accusations they have often made against the media tycoon ahead of this week's trial.
“It is well known that Jimmy Lai is one of the most notorious anti-China elements seeking to destabilize Hong Kong and a mastermind of the unrest that has taken place in Hong Kong,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning said last Wednesday briefing to reporters at a regular press event.
“He appears to have collaborated with external forces to undermine China's national security and is responsible for numerous egregious acts. The Hong Kong government has taken action to hold him accountable under the law. This is beyond any doubt,” Mao added.
Hong Kong authorities have used more cautious language and refused to comment on legal proceedings while defending how police and prosecutors have conducted national security prosecutions.
“Without commenting on any individual case, we must point out that the law enforcement authorities of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) have taken law enforcement measures based on evidence and in strict accordance with the law in relation to the actions of the natural or legal persons concerned.” , a government spokesman told CNN.
“All cases involving crimes endangering national security will be dealt with fairly and in a timely manner,” the spokesperson added.
CNN contacted Lai's legal team before the trial, but they declined to comment.
Amnesty International's deputy regional director for China, Sarah Brooks, said the trial was “the epitome of the rapid decline of the rule of law in Hong Kong.”
“From the beginning, this case was an attack on freedom of the press and freedom of expression. Hong Kong authorities must immediately and unconditionally release Jimmy Lai and vacate his criminal convictions. No one should be prosecuted solely for exercising their human rights,” Brooks said in a statement on Friday (December 15).
The Committee to Protect Journalists called the trial “a travesty of justice.”
“Press freedom and the rule of law are under scrutiny in Hong Kong,” said Beh Lih Yi, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator.
Lai's personal and financial fate is inextricably linked to the history of modern Hong Kong.
When the Great Chinese Famine hit mainland China in 1960, Lai smuggled himself on the bottom of a fishing boat from the southern province of Guangdong to what was then the British colony of Hong Kong. He came to the city at the age of 12 in poverty.
Lai said he became a casual worker in a garment factory, earning 60 Hong Kong dollars ($7) a month and living with 10 others in an apartment in the Sham Shui Po slum district – still one of Hong Kong's poorest districts.
Within two decades, Lai had learned English, worked his way up to salesman in the factory, and decided to start his own retail line. On a trip to New York during swatch season, he bought a pizza. The name Giordano was written on the napkin.
This became the name of his hugely successful men's casual clothing chain, which made Lai his first fortune.
But China's deadly crackdown on student protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989 politicized Lai and created something rare in Hong Kong: a wealthy tycoon willing to openly criticize Beijing's leadership.
He left the clothing store and chose a new role – media baron.
Lai founded Apple Daily in 1995, two years before Hong Kong was handed over to China.
Visually modeled on USA Today, the paper sparked a mini-revolution in the city's media landscape, sparking a price war and drastically changing the approach of competitors as they struggled to keep up with Lai's flashy tabloid sensibilities.
While celebrity gossip and other gossip stories were a major focus of the newspaper, it also proved to be one of the local government and Beijing's harshest critics, winning awards for its revelations about corruption and human rights reporting.
She also openly supported the successive waves of pro-democracy protests that swept Hong Kong, culminating in the 2019 movement. Lai himself was often seen at the marches, in the pouring rain or in the scorching summer heat, prompting accusations from China's state media.
As unrest between protesters and police became increasingly violent, demands from a minority of protesters for Hong Kong's independence from mainland China grew – a red line in the eyes of Beijing authorities, who viewed all pro-democracy calls as a US-backed “color revolution.” “branded” and described the demonstrators as “rioters,” “radicals” and “thugs.”
A devout Catholic and vocal supporter of former US President Donald Trump, Lai had campaigned extensively abroad for foreign governments to put pressure on China over Hong Kong. During this period of social unrest, Lai traveled to Washington, where he met with then-Vice President Mike Pence to discuss the political situation in Hong Kong and other political leaders.
In Beijing's eyes, this was seen as collaboration with foreign forces to undermine the country's security.
U.S. sanctions have long angered Chinese authorities and often trigger countermeasures. During protests in 2019, Beijing was outraged by Hong Kongers like Lai who openly called for restrictions to be imposed on Chinese and Hong Kong officials. State media mouthpiece Global Times, for example, described Lai's meeting with US politicians as a “foreign military intervention” by a “group of traitors” and vowed to punish such actions.
The US has since sanctioned several Hong Kong and Chinese officials over Beijing's ongoing crackdown in the city.
When Beijing imposed the new national security law on Hong Kong in June 2020, Lai publicly said he knew he would likely be targeted but vowed to remain in Hong Kong regardless.
Lai was taken away from his own newsroom in August 2020 and arrested by national security police on suspicion of collaborating with foreign forces.
“There is always a price to pay. I fought [for democracy] over the years,” he told CNN in an interview shortly after that arrest, before he was denied bail.
The following June, hundreds of police raided Apple Daily's headquarters and declared the newsroom a crime scene under the national security law.
Officials arrested executives and top news editors, confiscated journalistic materials, and confiscated laptops, computers and cellphones.
A week later, Apple Daily published its final edition. All 1 million copies – ten times more than the usual circulation – were sold out.
The newspaper's closure sparked a deep chill in Hong Kong's media industry. Several smaller local media outlets critical of the Hong Kong government also followed Apple Daily and closed following a police investigation.
“Freedom of expression and press cannot become a 'shield' for criminal acts, nor can media organizations become a place above the law and immune from accountability,” China's Hong Kong and Macau Office said -Affairs a day after Apple Daily closed following the national security crackdown.
The Hong Kong government has also repeatedly denied that the law has affected the city's media freedom.
However, this is disputed by several human rights and media groups.
In its annual World Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders ranks Hong Kong 140th out of 180 countries and territories, up from 18th place two decades ago. Mainland China ranks 179th.