Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai sentenced to 20 years in prison : NPR

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A Hong Kong court sentenced activist and publisher Jimmy Lai to 20 years in prison. Lai was found guilty of violating a national security law late last year. NPR’s Emily Feng reports.

EMILY FENG, BYLINE: Under cloudy skies in Hong Kong, Lai’s wife, Teresa, went to court Monday, accompanied by Cardinal Joseph Zen, who baptized Jimmy Lai upon his Catholic conversion in his 40s. Now 78 years old, Lai has gone through several changes. He had been a billionaire entrepreneur before starting a second career in his 40s as a media mogul, publishing the popular tabloid Apple Daily, and he had arrived in Hong Kong from mainland China as a young refugee.

CLAIRE LAI: My father was just a boy when he tasted a half-eaten chocolate bar and sailed across the ocean.

FENG: It’s Claire Lai, his daughter. She has been able to visit her father several times since his arrest in 2020, just weeks after Beijing passed a sweeping national security law that punishes broad categories of dissident behavior with up to life in prison.

LAI: What was hardest was seeing his health deteriorate.

FENG: He was expelled from his offices, along with six editors and managers of his media group. And when a national security court found Mr. Lai guilty of sedition and collusion with foreign forces late last year, Lai was already serving another prison sentence for fraud over his media group’s office lease. Her daughter is even more worried about her health.

LAI: In less than a year, he lost more than 10 kilos. He has heart problems. He has skin problems. He has infections, back problems, waist problems (ph).

FENG: Although dozens of activists and opposition politicians have been charged under the national security law, Beijing has portrayed Lai as a particularly fierce anti-China critic and the mastermind of protests against his rule in Hong Kong. Mark Clifford wrote a biography of Lai and claims the activist served no one other than Hong Kong.

MARK CLIFFORD: He’s just indebted to Hong Kong for everything it’s given him.

FENG: Last month, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer made Britain’s first state visit to China in eight years. Lai’s legal team hoped its possible diplomatic intervention could ease the sentence for Lai, who is a British citizen. One of his lawyers, Jonathan Price, told NPR last December that Lai’s poor health meant any sentence amounted to a life sentence. Along with Lai, six of his leaders and two Hong Kong activists were also sentenced on Monday to terms of up to ten years. Lai did not speak at the sentencing and did not submit a letter of apology, but he smiled and greeted members of the public who came.

Emily Feng, NPR News.

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