“It is desperate now,” says Sebastien Lai. “I really don’t know how long my father has” (“ ‘Desperate’ son of Hong Kong’s jailed Jimmy Lai seeks meeting with Keir Starmer,” The Guardian, March 7, 2025).
Seventy-seven-year-old Jimmy Lai (shown with Sebastien above), founder of the pro-democracy Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily, has been in a Hong Kong prison since December 2020. The paper was raided in August 2020 because its support for mass protests against the Chinese Communist Party and had to shut down the following year.
In a long-delayed and lengthy trial in Hong Kong, Lai tried during some 50 days of testimony to defend his actions, dispute the assumptions of his tormenters, and appeal to distinctions and principles about which the Party and its fake judges are indifferent.
A UK government spokesperson said: “British national Jimmy Lai’s case is a priority. We continue to call on the Hong Kong authorities to end their politically motivated prosecution and immediately release Jimmy Lai.”
Last year Starmer [said that he] raised Lai’s case with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, and has said securing his freedom was a priority for the government.
But in London, Lai’s legal team said more urgency was needed. One of his lawyers, Caoilfhionn Gallagher, said delays in proceedings coupled with Lai’s age, health and conditions of detention could lead to “a British national dying in prison for being a journalist and for standing up for democratic values.
“That’s why there’s such an urgency today to actually getting on with sitting down to talk to the government,” she told journalists.
We don’t know what has been said in closed-door meetings between representatives of the UK government and representatives of the PRC government. But the demeanor and track record of UK leaders is not encouraging. For Sebastien Lai, the liberation of his father is a priority. He has been fighting for Jimmy Lai’s release for years, and, clearly, will fight until the bitter end. With respect to the Chinese government, the priority of the Starmer government is to appease it no matter what it may do.
Also see:
Hong Kong Watch: “The Government needs to stop caving in to China”
The government of the United Kingdom “can and should find ways to engage Beijing. But on our terms. By defending our values, freedoms and interests. By requiring the release of a British citizen like Jimmy Lai from prison; an end to forced labour, slave labour and prison labour in our supply chains; a stop to atrocity crimes against the Uyghurs, Tibetans, Falun Gong; [and] an end to the persecution of Christians, the crackdown in Hong Kong, and the threats to Taiwan….”
