Hong Kong court rejects Catholic democracy activist Jimmy Lai’s appeal of 2021 conviction

Jimmy Lai and other demonstrators had been convicted in 2021 of taking part in what the Hong Kong government had argued was an “unauthorized assembly” at Victoria Park in Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay neighborhood. / Credit: 美国之音莉雅, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

CNA Staff, Aug 12, 2024 / 14:18 pm (CNA).

Hong Kong’s high court this week rejected the appeal of Catholic democracy activist Jimmy Lai and six others to overturn their sentences for having participated in protests in 2019.

Lai and the other demonstrators had been convicted in 2021 of taking part in what the Hong Kong government had argued was an “unauthorized assembly” at Victoria Park in Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay neighborhood. The demonstration was against what activists said was police abuse in Hong Kong.

Several of the defendants including Lai had been sentenced to jail terms of varying lengths. The convicted protesters had argued on appeal that the sentences were disproportionate to their human rights.

In its ruling on Monday the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal said their argument was “unsustainable.”

“It is contrary to all established principles governing constitutional challenges in Hong Kong and especially contrary to accepted principles for assessing proportionality,” the court wrote. “It is unsupported by legal authority.”

The ruling of the court was unanimous.

Lai, an outspoken pro-democracy activist who has cited his Catholic faith as a source of strength and inspiration, has been under various forms of prosecution in China for several years.

He was first arrested in August 2020 and has been permanently detained since the end of that year. In 2022, he was sentenced to five years and nine months in prison on a fraud charge.

Also in 2021 he was sentenced to a 13-month jail sentence for participating in a 2020 vigil commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

The jailed media mogul was the owner of the Apple Daily, which was Hong Kong’s most popular Chinese-language newspaper until it was closed in June 2021 after its offices were raided by hundreds of Hong Kong police and its executives detained. 

In September 2023 Lai marked his 1,000th day in prison in Hong Kong while awaiting trial.

In a petition last November signed by 10 Catholic bishops and archbishops, the prelates “call[ed] on the government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region to immediately and unconditionally release Lai.

“Mr. Lai’s persecution for supporting pro-democracy causes through his newspaper and in other forums has gone on long enough,” the bishops wrote. 

“There is no place for such cruelty and oppression in a territory that claims to uphold the rule of law and respect the right to freedom of expression,” they said.