Facing the possibility of life in prison, Jimmy Lai, the former publisher of the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily and a major leader of Hong Kong’s mass pro-democracy movement, has taken the stand (“Tycoon Jimmy Lai denies asking US to act against HK, China in landmark trial,” Reuters, November 20, 2024).
Lai testifies that, aware of the dangers facing him and others at his newspaper, he was circumspect.
One example of Lai’s alleged collusion was meetings in July 2019 with then U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to discuss the political crisis in Hong Kong as mass pro-democracy and anti-China protests intensified.
Under oath in court on Wednesday, Lai denied asking anything specific of Pence.
“I would not dare to ask the vice president to do anything. I would just relay to him what happened in Hong Kong when he asked me,” Lai told the court.
Lai said he had asked Pompeo: “Not to do something but to say something. To voice…support for Hong Kong.”
This is hopeless. When a government makes an important public statement, that’s an action. For the U.S. government to voice support for Hong Kong in the context of China’s attacks on Hong Kong is to be doing something. But if there is a distinction between acting and speaking that could be pressed, it is not the kind that the Chinese Communist Party would recognize.
On Taiwan, Lai said he had sought to connect former U.S. deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz and retired U.S. general Jack Keane to an interlocutor for former Taiwan president Tsai Ing-wen.
“Tsai and myself are friends, so we always talk about U.S. policy,” he told the court, explaining that he had sought in this way to set up an unofficial channel between then U.S. President Donald Trump and the Tsai administration to bolster mutual understanding….
Lai, however, told the high court how his own guiding principles were aligned through his newspaper with the people of Hong Kong, namely a belief in the rule of law and freedoms including those of speech, religion and assembly.
“We were always in support of movements for freedom,” Lai, wearing a grey blazer and spectacles, told a packed courtroom. He added that he opposed Hong Kong and Taiwan independence….
Lai had been held in pre-trial detention for more than 1,400 days, before his trial kicked off last December.
On the question of independence, ABC News reported:
Lai told the court that the Apple Daily did not condone violence, particularly during the 2019 pro-democracy protests. He said advocating for the independence of Hong Kong was “a reality too crazy to think about.”
“I never allowed the newspaper or our staff to mention this,” Lai testified.
The Party, which has been acting to end freedom and democracy in Hong Kong since before the handover in 1997, doesn’t care about these distinctions or lines. In the eyes of the Chinese Communist Party, Lai’s sin has been opposing it at all.
Not a landmark
The Reuters headline is mistaken. A landmark in the relevant meaning is “an event or development that marks a turning point or a stage.” The party-state’s railroading of Jimmy Lai, its abuse of language, its treatment of all criticism as a threat to “national security,” and its pretense of weighing evidence and administering justice do not add up to a turning point or new stage in the destruction of Hong Kong rights and liberties.
They are more of the same. If Lai is called guilty and sentenced to more years or life in prison, the state will be continuing its previous treatment of him and other pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong.
The turning point of arresting and imprisoning the prominent publisher of a Hong Kong newspaper that champions democracy and freedom for Hong Kong has already been passed. The trial, a show trial, could be more than a nominal landmark only if it ends by finding Lai innocent and releasing him from prison. Not likely.
