Jimmy Lai remains in solitary confinement after Hong Kong trial delayed until November

Hong Kong media tycoon and Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai. / Credit: Napa Institute

CNA Staff, Aug 5, 2024 / 17:01 pm (CNA).

Media mogul and pro-democracy advocate Jimmy Lai will remain in solitary confinement after a Hong Kong court on July 25 delayed the 76-year-old’s national security trial until the end of November.

Lai, the Catholic Chinese-born founder of the newspaper Apple Daily, which Hong Kong shut down in 2021, entered a not guilty plea at the beginning of 2024 to the charges of conspiring to collude with a foreign power.

Initially set to begin in 2022, the landmark national security trial was delayed until Dec. 18, 2023. The prosecution — estimated to last 80 days — ran until June 11 of this year. The trial has been further pushed out until Nov. 20. 

Lai’s legal team appealed to throw the trial out, arguing the prosecution lacked enough evidence. The court rejected the attempt, saying there was enough evidence to support the three charges against Lai. 

Lai is charged with two counts of conspiracy to collude with foreign powers and conspiracy to publish seditious materials. 

Lai was arrested from his home in August 2020 under a recently instituted national security law that was passed by China’s communist-controlled government. 

The law sharply curtailed free speech in the region in an effort to quash what the Chinese Communist Party considered subversion and sedition in the separately administered region of Hong Kong.

Lai faces life in prison over the charges. 

The prosecution has accused Lai of being a “radical figure” who sought to sow hatred and “stir up opposition” in Hong Kong, according to media reports. 

The publisher is supposed to testify in his own defense during the high-profile case, according to his lawyer Robert Pang.

He has been detained since the end of 2020 and was convicted for involvement in protests and unauthorized assembly in 2021 and sentenced to 17 months in prison. In 2022, Lai was sentenced to five years and nine months in prison for fraud. The current trial was set to begin in 2022 but began in December 2023 after a yearlong delay when the government tried to block him from choosing his own lawyer.

Lai is currently serving his sentence in the Hong Kong maximum security Stanley Prison and has spent more than three and a half years in solitary confinement since his arrest in December 2020. 

Lai relies on his Catholic faith for strength, according to his biographer Mark Clifford. He  joined the Catholic Church in 1997 with the support of his wife, Theresa, whom he married in 1991. 

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) lists Lai as a victim of religious persecution for his religious freedom advocacy.  

Hong Kong, once 18th in the global press freedom ranking in 2002, now ranks 135th as of 2024, according to Reporters Without Borders.