The fear that Jimmy Lai, former publisher of the Hong Kong paper Apple Daily, prominent friend of freedom and democracy and foe of the Chinese Communist Party, would be given a life sentence has been realized.
That’s what the twenty-year sentence the Hong Kong government just announced amounts to. Lai is 78. He has already been incarcerated for five years, one of the regime’s first victims after the National Security Law was imposed on Hong Kong in 2020 and stripped it of any remaining political independence from the mainland. Prison has taken its toll. Maybe if he were released now and allowed to recuperate, he could live to be a 100. That won’t happen if he remains behind bars.
National security
NBC reports that “Hong Kong democracy activist Jimmy Lai sentenced to 20 years in prison for national security offenses” (February 8, 2026). According to CCP lingo, criticism of CCP tyranny violates “national security,” and Lai was a leading critic. Less prominent critics have also been jailed on grounds of violating national security or committing subversion, but not for so many years.
Lai’s son Sebastien Lai said the sentence, the longest given out so far under a Beijing-imposed national security law, was “devastating for our family and life-threatening for my father,” and that it signaled the “total destruction” of the Hong Kong legal system.
“After more than five years of relentlessly persecuting my father, it is time for China to do the right thing and release him before it is too late,” he said in a statement.
Eighteen years of Lai’s sentence are to be served consecutively with another case. Eight co-defendants, including six journalists from Lai’s shuttered Apple Daily newspaper and two activists, received sentences ranging from six years and three months to 10 years. All except Lai had pleaded guilty, and several testified against him….
John Lee, Hong Kong’s top leader, said Monday that Lai had used the pro-democracy Apple Daily to “poison the minds” of people in Hong Kong and that his sentence “brings great relief to all.”
Chinese authorities in Hong Kong also said they supported the sentence, while the city’s national security police chief, Steve Li, said concerns about Lai’s health were “exaggerated.”…
Rule of law
Hong Kong officials insist that all is well and tout the independence of their judicial system, which the NBC reporter says is “separate from mainland China’s.” Andrew Cheung, one of Hong Kong’s top judges, says that calls for the release of a man who did no wrong (which the reporter describes as calls for “premature release”) “strike at the very heart of the rule of law itself.”
There you have it. An independent top judge of the separate and independent judicial system of Hong Kong has declared that any objection to destroying the innocent “strikes at the very heart of the rule of law itself.”
Adherence to “the rule of law” is supposed to have something to do with adhering to the requirements of justice. It’s not about merely going through the motions of meaningless formalities in hopes of disguising blatant injustice. That objecting to an injustice cannot be justly charged with “striking at the very heart of the rule of law itself” is not too hard to grasp except by people, perhaps including Cheung, for whom such words as “justice” and “rule of law” are entirely detached from reality. But maybe he’s just lying.
The chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, Senator Dan Sullivan, and its co-chair, Representative Chris Smith, issued a statement calling for Lai’s release.
“We condemn today’s sentencing of democracy advocate and prisoner of conscience Jimmy Lai—another step in Beijing’s campaign to crush independent journalism and peaceful dissent in Hong Kong. This is not justice. It is the weaponization of the courts to punish speech and intimidate an entire society.
“We call on the Hong Kong authorities to grant Jimmy Lai medical parole and release him immediately and unconditionally. After years of arbitrary detention and worsening health due to harsh prison conditions, he should not spend one more night behind bars.
“We remain deeply alarmed by the dismantling of Hong Kong’s autonomy and rule of law. The Chinese Communist Party must end the criminalization of the very freedoms that once made Hong Kong an engine of global commerce and a beacon for liberty-starved mainlanders.”
Requests
Heads of state like Donald Trump and Keir Starmer have reported bringing up Jimmy Lai’s case during talks with the current dictator of the People’s Republic of China, Xi Jinping. They said that they asked that Lai be released. We have not also heard about any cost that was to be imposed on the government of China if he were not released.
