Last week, Jimmy Lai testified for several days in his long-delayed trial. Already behind bars for years, the brave former publisher of the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily faces life in prison if convicted. He is accused by the Chinese Communist Party of sedition and conspiring with foreigners (“Hong Kong tycoon Jimmy Lai tells court he advocated ‘peaceful resistance,’ ” AFP, November 22, 2024).
On Friday, Lai rejected the allegation that he had intended to incite public hatred and violence against the authorities with commentaries published in Apple Daily.
“All I said…was a true reflection of the truth I perceived and the true thought of my heart, without any sense of hostility or intention to be seditious, and this goes for all my other articles,” Lai said.
“I always advocate peaceful resistance,” he said, adding that the purpose of the articles was to “resist the encroachment of China on our freedom”….
Lai was also questioned about the founding of the English online edition of Apple Daily in May 2020, when the city was bracing for the security law.
Lai told the court a “sense of crisis” drove him to believe that the new edition would help Hong Kong by motivating foreign politicians to “take notice of our situation” and “voice out their concerns” to China.
Apple Daily was forced to close in 2021 after police raids and the arrests of its senior editors.
Whether the resistance is peaceful or violent, resistance to tyranny is what the CCP won’t abide. Lai has been and will be punished for this and for being a large target.
The page
So with the end of this trial and with the convictions of 45 of Lai’s fellow defenders of Hong Kong democracy, is the city ready to “turn the page”?
It is, according to a “news analysis” by Lin Suling for The Straits Times: “With 45 political activists sentenced on Nov 19 for subversion, Hong Kong hopes to turn the page on a troubled political phase, amid growing bread-and-butter preoccupations.”
People write such things and pretend to think that they’re saying something connected to reality. There will be no page-turning until Hong Kong is liberated from the 2020 and 2024 National Security Acts that the CCP imposed on Hong Kong. Wrapping up the unjust convictions of dozens of pro-democracy activists doesn’t change the nature of the political conditions that Hongkongers must now live under. Not even if Hongkongers who are muddling on because they see no alternative tell pollsters that they’re not thinking about lost freedom anymore.
Favorably, it seems, Lin Suling quotes one of Hong Kong’s CCP-approved lawmakers, page-turner Chan Yung, on how all is now well in the neighborhood: “Now we are back to high-quality democracy, and LegCo [the legislative council] has also returned to play the role of coordinating with the government to help its governance.” The theory here being that the best democracy is a dead democracy.
As for the Jimmy Lai trial, everybody is already not thinking about it, says Lin Suling. “Hong Kong has other preoccupations.”
Also see:
Acton Institute: Video: The Hong Konger: Jimmy Lai’s Extraordinary Struggle for Freedom
