Those who have been waiting in front of the court since the previous night and the police feel the importance of what will be broadcast starting this Monday. Jimmy Laibig press boss Hong Kong and advocate of anti-government protests life imprisonment on charges of collusion with foreign powers and sedition. The much thinner Lai arrived in a police van from prison, where he had been on light sentences for the past three years.
It is one of the peaks of the judicial marathon against anti-government activists following the approval of the National Security Law. It was approved by Beijing to crack down on protests over vandalism that pushed the former colony to the brink in 2019. According to some, he brought peace to the region, according to others, he laminated the old freedoms with the formula of “one country, two systems”. Police warned that any attempt to obstruct the process would be punished, and local media featured only one activist who was loud in the area. Not even the ashes of this movement remain, whose leaders were dispersed among the people. exile And prison.
76-year-old Lai did not accept the accusations. “When it comes to fundamental rights, protection should be interpreted generously in favor of Lai,” his lawyers said at the beginning of the hearing. said. It will be complicated. Judges enforcing the National Security Law are hand-picked by Hong Kong’s chief executive, John Lee, who has a long-established and harsh reputation. Security Minister Chris Tang is no longer a moderate. He suggested last month that the trial would show the public “how bad” Lai’s actions were and applauded the 100% convictions in the National Security Law cases.
“Provocative” information
Lai and other Apple Daily officials accused of publishing “provocative” information and collusion with foreign powers by calling for the international community to impose sanctions on the governments of Hong Kong and China, among other things.
Lai was a protagonist on the Hong Kong scene for decades; He was admired as much as he was hated. At the age of 12, he escaped from famine on the continent and came to the island as a stowaway on a fishing boat. He did small jobs and built a building. textile empire and after the student was crushed Tiananmen, from the press decided to fight Beijing. In 1995, two years before Hong Kong returned to the Motherland, AppleDailyThe loudest and most popular newspaper in the former colony.
It was an unconventional example of journalism: a sensationalist and sexist tabloid with loose morals. Its birth shook the local journalism landscape with a price war, and the immediate success encouraged the emergence of clones. There was an unpleasant discriminatory prejudice against the inland Chinese that we might call racism or xenophobia if they did not share race and country with Hong Kong people. Advertising pages are remembered associating them with the locust plagues that devastated Hong Kong, or with denunciations of their wild ways in the face of British reformation. He wasn’t much better than any Murdoch descendant.
revolutionary slogans
But it is not their morality that is on trial these days, but rather their support for these mass mobilizations. During these turbulent months it was common for attendees to show the following pages. revolutionary slogans They cut it from the newspaper. Lai’s meetings were also common United States of America With the Trump Administration’s most stubborn hawks: Secretary of State, Mike Pompeovice president, Mike Penceformer presidential advisor John Bolton…There is no issue that irritates Beijing more than foreign interference in matters it considers unconditionally its own, so as soon as the law was approved, a prison sentence was deemed inevitable. Apple Daily succumbed to legal attacks, police searches, staff arrests and asset freezes in 2021.
The hearing of Lai, who has a British passport, is being followed with interest. United Kingdom. London described it as “highly politicized” and highlighted: “priority“. The Chinese embassy condemned the “blatant interference” in Hong Kong justice and recalled the seriousness of the accusations.