Jimmy Lai’s NatSec trial starts today. This is the highest-profile NatSec prosecution so far, and – let’s say – has the potential to leave Hong Kong’s reputation for rule of law in worse shape than before. Supporters lining up in the cold overnight. UK Foreign Secretary’s statement.
Samuel Bicket on the role of judges in the lead-up to the trial, which starts today (site blocked in Hong Kong, at least from my ISP, so VPN or other workaround needed)…
For 80 days, a pre-ordained theater will unfold in which the Department of Justice will present evidence of Lai’s political connections abroad, and the three complicit judges will ensure the process is smooth for the prosecution and difficult for the defense. When it’s over, Lai will be convicted and sentenced to an obscene prison term—probably for the rest of his life.
…The trial will be long—it is slated to last for months—and it will be a media circus. Conviction is inevitable. Success for Lai’s sympathizers will be measured by the length of the sentence: anything less than life without parole might be seen as a victory, even if the 70-year-old Lai would be unlikely to see freedom again either way.
Yet, for the CCP’s Enemy Number 1, it was never going to be sufficient for Lai to remain free over the years it took for the Hong Kong DOJ and courts to reach this point. Nor would it even be enough for Lai to be detained on remand, where he would still be imprisoned but would be allowed daily visitors, outside food, and a more relaxed environment.
Instead, over the past several years the DOJ and judiciary worked hand-in-hand to charge, convict, and sentence Lai on a series of increasingly absurd public order and fraud charges. As a result, Lai has been serving time as a convicted prisoner for years.
…judges have bent over backwards to reach convictions on the most tenuous of evidence, then sentenced Lai to prison terms well beyond any semblance of rationality.
In the Guardian…
The trial, which is being held in open court, will be an opportunity to attract public attention to his case, even if the verdict is considered to be a foregone conclusion.
In November the security minister, Chris Tang, said the trial would allow the public to see how “bad” Lai’s alleged offences are. Tang has previously praised the 100% conviction rate in national security cases.
Fiona O’Brien, the UK bureau director of Reporters Without Borders, said: “This is no time for equivocation: if the UK government really believes in press freedom – as it says it does – it cannot stand silently by while a British citizen is condemned to die in jail because of what he published.”
More from Reuters …
Foreign envoys, business people and legal scholars will be watching the trial closely, saying it looms as a fresh diplomatic flashpoint and a key test for the city’s judicial independence and freedoms under the sweeping national security law imposed by China in 2020.
…”Any talk of justice would be a farce,” Sebastien Lai, one of his sons, told Reuters from London, where he recently met the British Foreign Secretary David Cameron. “Everyone knows it’s going to be a show trial.”
….Lai’s plight has also highlighted some of the contradictions faced by Hong Kong as it seeks to rejuvenate its reputation as a global financial centre with national security now a policy prerogative under China’s leader, Xi Jinping.
Lai’s listed company Next Digital had its assets frozen after a mass police raid on its headquarters, and bankers were threatened, essentially crippling operations and forcing its shutdown.
Those contradictions aren’t going away… Hong Kong’s pre-2020 establishment – bureaucrats, tycoons, international business – do not seem to be at ease with a more authoritarian atmosphere and are clearly distressed by the damage done to Hong Kong’s reputation by the NatSec measures, the Covid regulations and the city’s new exposure to Beijing’s increasingly hardline ideology. Old-style figures like Anthony Cheung, Abraham Shek and even Regina Ip have voiced at least some implicit criticism of the less pluralistic, less tolerant new order. Business types with family and shareholders’ fortunes in the game recite the new official lines, but not exactly with enthusiasm. They try to convince themselves that the worst is over, and Hong Kong is ‘back to normal’ and ‘open for business’.
And then along comes the new ascendant NatSec establishment: ex-cops now heading up the government, once-marginalized United Front groups, opportunists in the professions, and Mainland officials in the background. And the ‘back to normal’ message is drowned out by shrill CCP-style press statements, million-dollar bounties on overseas dissidents, arrests of ever-more obscure individuals on sedition charges, patriotism in schools and museums, denunciations of gay rights, and on and on – now Jimmy Lai. At the end of last week, the NatSec Law was suddenly amended to allow the authorities to seize suspects’ assets for beyond two years.
It is a disgrace that the self-reverential Western media are determined to cover this trial as a battle for press freedom, when it is far more consequential than that.
This story is about the essential nature of human dignity and freedom of conscience, and the remarkable courage of one man to sacrifice his every material possession, and everything he holds dear in life, to knowingly walk into prison voluntarily for the rest of his life in support of universal, God-given rights in the face of a powerful, evil regime that is determined to kill him. He is a great man.
Mr. Lai is not on trial. It is the CCP and their local minions who are on trial.
That Mr. Lai once owned a newspaper is incidental to this story. His towering dignity and unwavering courage in the face of implacable evil are the story, and that’s how the media should cover it.
A shame the US doesn’t have a NatSec “regime” to deal with the likes of the blowhard orange shit. Talk about TOO much deference and rights/privileges and a twisted, laser focus of instead interfering with a woman’s private business.
USD51k/month and a Mandarin Oriental suite is all it takes to keep a white (yes, white still lends some optic legitimacy in Asia), former important pooh-bah in a “liberal democracy” nation’s court on your side and parroting the party line?
How do I get this gig?? Asking for a friend.
@Sammy: give a call to Grenville Cross, former Director of Prosecution. He has a rate card on his desk with the going rates for colonial dinosaurs who are willing to sell out to the new-and-improved judiciary or any other self-important position. If he is not at home, try the bar of the Hong Kong Club.
Just as I thought, Agnes Chan ‘flipping the bird’ to the HK authorities is going to make the release conditions for all of the current and future-jailed NSL ‘protesters’ even more demanding (SCMP: Hong Kong opposition activist Agnes Chow ‘not only national security law suspect allowed to leave city’, 18 Dec 2023). With Christmas just a week away, I bet they are tickled pink with the gift the selfish cow has just delivered them.
I truly hope that CY Leung will be asked to come as a witness as this must be the “appropriate time” to present the evidence of who those “foreign powers” (remember CYL on 19 October 2014?) are.
Did you know that John “Pikachiu” Lee is also a member of the Hong Kong Club? Not many people know this.
@Joe Blow
For many decades the HK Club invited every Governor, Chief Secretary & Financial Secretary to become a Member, and the Club extended the same courtesy to the equivalent communist officials following the Handover. In many cases, both pre- and post-Handover, it’s the only way the wankers could get in.
How many years did Jimmy Lai keep that black bear caged up in solitary in his back garden before it was taken away by the AFCD in 1993 and eventually shipped off to sanctuary in Thailand by Cathay Pacific? SCMP stories are paywalled, even that far back.
@ Chinese Netizen
If the blowhard orange shit is reelected, he’ll be instituting his version of NSL and using it to enact revenge on his many enemies. That’s the way it works in authoritarian, dictator-led regimes.
@ Joe Blow: I’m sure letting in the “unwashed” class like coppers is SOP once they climb the ladder to important positions that’ll get fellow members out of inebriated driving situations or being caught in a Sham Shui Po health therapy clinic raid.
@Reactor #4 – Agnes Chan is a Hong Kong singer who is popular in Japan. You mean Agnes Chow. Proofread yourself more carefully.
@Chinese Netizen
Formerly the HK Club membership door was firmly closed to all but the most senior government apparatchiks, and the posts eligible for membership were designated specifically. Now the deputy secretary of water works may be forgiven for thinking his or her HK Club membership is an employment perquisite that comes with the job.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
@Steve
What do you think Biden has been doing with his 91 charges against Trump? Lawfare 101. Which is exactly why his poll number go up every time new charges are added. US voters see through the charade just most in Hong Kong see through the Jimmy Lai charade…
If Trump is going to do all of these things, why didn’t he do them the first four years he was in office?
HK Cynic
Point is “Trump” has said he is going to do “these things”.
Fact somebody says he is going to do (quasi fascistic) “things” makes it more likely he will do, than not.
Mary Trump’s books should be read, by you.