Media mogul Jimmy Lai, founder of Apple Daily, leaves the Final Court of Appeal in a prison van in Hong Kong, China, February 9, 2021. REUTERS / Tyrone Siu
Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai and nine other pro-democracy activists are expected to be convicted on Friday after being found guilty of attending unauthorized rallies during the 2019 anti-government protests.
It would be the first time that Lai, one of Hong Kong’s most prominent Democratic activists, who has been in prison since December after being denied bail in a separate national security trial, will receive a sentence.
About 100 people, including foreign diplomats, lined up in front of the court early Friday to get a seat for the hearing.
Lai was found guilty in two separate trials in early April for illegal assemblies on August 18 and August 31, 2019, respectively. The maximum possible sentence is five years in prison.
His repeated arrests have drawn criticism from Western governments and international rights groups, who have expressed concern about declining freedoms in the global financial center, including freedom of expression and assembly.
In the August 18 case, District Court Judge Amanda Woodcock found him guilty along with Martin Lee, who helped launch the city’s largest opposition party in the 1990s and is often called the “father of democracy” of the former British colony.
When he went to court on Friday, Lee said, “I feel completely relaxed, I’m ready to face the sentence.”
The other defendants also found guilty included prominent lawyer Margaret Ng and veteran Democrats Lee Cheuk-yan, Albert Ho, Leung Kwok-hung, Cyd Ho, Au Nok-hin and Leung Yiu-chung. The latter pleaded guilty.
In his mitigation speech, Ng said the law should not only be defended in court or in the legislature, but also on the street.
“When the people, in the last resort, had to give collective expression to their anguish and urge the government to respond, protected only by their expectation that the government will respect their rights, I must be prepared to stand with them, to support them and raise them. you in their place, “she said.
In the second trial, the same judge found Lai and Lee Cheuk-yan guilty along with Yeung Sum. The August 31 clashes were some of the worst in Hong Kong, with police firing tear gas and water cannons at pro-democracy protesters who dropped petrol bombs.
All three pleaded guilty.
Lee Cheuk-yan posted on Facebook late Thursday that he expects to go to jail, but that his mind is “free like the ocean and the sky.”
The 2019 pro-democracy protests were fueled by Beijing’s growing pressure on the large-scale freedoms promised to Hong Kong to return to Chinese rule in 1997 and plunged the semi-autonomous city into its biggest handover crisis.
Since then, Beijing has strengthened its authoritarian control over Hong Kong by imposing a comprehensive national security law, punishing anything it considers to be secession, subversion, terrorism or collusion with foreign forces with life imprisonment.
Proponents of her case have been working to make the actual transcript of this statement available online.
Lai, the founder of the Apple Daily tabloid, was a frequent visitor to Washington, meeting with officials such as former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to gather support for democracy in Hong Kong, prompting Beijing to call him a “traitor.”
Lai is scheduled for two more court appearances on Friday in the ongoing trial, in which he is accused of collaborating with a foreign country and a case of fraud related to renting the building that houses Apple Daily.
Earlier this week, the tabloid published a handwritten letter that Lai sent to his colleagues in prison, saying: “It is our responsibility as journalists to seek justice. As long as we are not blinded by unjust temptations, as long as we are not blinded by unjust temptations. do not let evil make its way through us, we fulfill our responsibility ”.
“It’s time to get up,” he wrote.
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