"The former publisher of a pro-democracy newspaper, Apple Daily, is expected to spend the rest of his life in prison."
"For five years, Jimmy Lai, the founder of a popular pro-democracy newspaper called Apple Daily, has routinely spent more than twenty-three hours a day in solitary confinement in a prison cell in Hong Kong. On Monday, a Hong Kong court found Lai, who is seventy-eight, guilty of sedition and conspiracy to collude with foreign forces. His sentencing will take place at a later date, but he is expected to spend the rest of his life in prison.
The verdict followed a landmark twenty-one-month trial that foreign governments and rights groups consistently condemned as politically motivated, and which was seen by many as an indication of the broader collapse of civil liberties and media freedom in Hong Kong since 2020, when China imposed a national security law there. “This was a sham trial,” Aleksandra Bielakowska, an advocacy manager at the Reporters Without Borders office in Taiwan, said. Bielakowska, who was deported from Hong Kong in 2024 when she traveled there to monitor Lai’s trial, observed, “It’s the death of press freedom in Hong Kong.”
Some of Lai’s supporters queued overnight outside the West Kowloon Law Court Building for a seat in the hearing; someone delivered a box of apples. On Monday, an 855-page verdict was handed down by three judges who were picked by the government for the case. Judge Esther Toh told the courtroom that Lai’s testimony was “evasive” and “unreliable” and that Lai had long held “resentment and hatred” toward China. Lai, seated in a glass box in the courtroom, was left to listen."
Liam Scott reports for Columbia Journalism Review December 15, 2025.
SEE ALSO:
"The Rise And Fall Of Jimmy Lai, Whose Trajectory Mirrored That Of Hong Kong Itself" (Guardian)
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