HONG KONG (OSV News) – The trial of Catholic prosecutor Jimmy Lai for violating the national security law imposed by China is approaching the 100-day mark. He is Hong Kong’s highest-ranking person to be tried under the law, and his case is considered a landmark case.
The trial of the 76-year-old pro-democracy advocate was postponed until June 3 after Lai’s lawyers said he was unwell. They told the judge that Lai, who is being held at Stanley Prison in Hong Kong, had seen a doctor last night and had been prescribed medication. The trial resumed on June 4, with a judge telling Lai she could tell the court if she was hurt again.
Lai’s son, Sebastien, said his father had diabetes and was diagnosed with high blood pressure in prison in 2021.
For decades Lai, the founder of the now-defunct Apple Daily, has campaigned for press freedom and freedom of expression in Hong Kong, where he voted It was declared a Special Administrative Region of China in 1997, when British rule ended after 150 years. year. Hong Kong’s basic law is intended to allow the country “to achieve a high degree of independence and enjoy independent executive, legislative and judicial power, including final decision.”
However, after a year of pro-democracy protests in 2019, China passed the 2020 Chin national security law, the only thing that ended the protests in Hong Kong, the Associated Press reported.
Under the law, Lai was arrested in August 2020 and has been in prison since December 2020. He pleaded not guilty to two charges of collaborating with foreign forces and counting one for promoting the rebels. If found guilty, he could face life in prison.
In January, Alice Jill Edwards, the UN’s special rapporteur on torture, said evidence may have been obtained in Lai’s trial through the torture of a witness in China.
In addition to the charges he pleaded not guilty to, in December 2021 Lai was sentenced for his role in attempting to commemorate the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing. The Chinese government said at least 240 people were killed on June 4, 1989, when Chinese buses attacked protesters in the square; the Chinese Red Cross said 2,600 people had died.
In August 2023, the Hong Kong Court of Appeal overturned the defendants’ conviction for organizing an illegal association, but upheld their conviction for participating in a trial. law.
In a statement on June 4 for ucanews.com, Benedict Rogers, a British activist and Director of Hong Kong Watch, said that a secret phone call from the British embassy in China at the time the death toll of Tiananmen Square was about 10,000. Rogers noted that until the national security law was enacted, “Hong Kong was the only city under Chinese control that could publicly mark the anniversary.”
Rogers – who prosecutors have named as one of the foreign agents with whom Lai met – noted that Lai had served a “13-month sentence for lighting a candle and praying to a Tiananmen watch.”
“Let’s also remember that the reason he founded the pro-democracy magazine Next in 1990 and the Apple Daily newspaper in 1995 was because he was deeply moved by the assassination of Beijing,” said Rogers.
The Hong Kong Diocese’s Justice and Peace Commission has often helped commemorate the Tiananmen massacre, and in 2009 Cardinal Joseph Zen called the victims martyrs who died to promote democracy and pure government in China. Lai is Cardinal Zen’s main financial supporter.
In another ruling under the national security law, in late May, a Hong Kong court convicted 14 pro-democracy activists, including former lawyers, of conspiracy to commit coup d’état. . Those convicted were among hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong citizens who voted in an unprecedented election in July 2020.
The Associated Press reported that the election organizers said they wanted to stabilize the Hong Kong government by gaining a majority in the legislature, but the court ruled that the election did not violate the authority. of the government.
The trial of Hong Kong’s Jimmy Lai continues; Protesters remember the Tiananmen Square massacre appeared first on OSV News.