Sebastien Lai, son of Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai, holds a sign calling for the release of his father on the sidelines of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, on Sept. 27.GABRIELLE TETRAULT-FARBER/Reuters
Free Jimmy Lai: That is the message that democratic countries like Canada need to make clear to China’s rulers.
If you’ve forgotten who Mr. Lai is – the Communist Party of China and its proxies in Hong Kong would really like it if you did – he is the owner of the shuttered Apple Daily newspaper in Hong Kong who has been in prison for more than 1,000 days for the crime of supporting democracy in print.
Mr. Lai will turn 76 on Friday, and 10 days later his trial on charges laid under Hong Kong’s Beijing-imposed National Security Law will begin. His tormentors fully expect him to be convicted of sedition and other trumped-up charges; Chris Tang, Hong Kong’s secretary for security, boasted in April that the conviction rate under the NSL is 100 per cent.
If and when that happens, Mr. Lai will likely receive a sentence so lengthy that he will die in prison. Such inhuman cruelty will serve a designated purpose – to forcefully assert to Hong Kongers that China’s destruction of the democratic rights they once took for granted is complete, and that speaking out against Beijing will cost you everything.
Beijing unilaterally inserted the NSL into Hong Kong’s constitution in 2020, after two years of pro-democracy protests prompted President Xi Jinping to crack down. The law’s broad terms give authorities sweeping powers to arbitrarily imprison people for politically motivated reasons.
China would very much like Mr. Lai’s fate to be sealed away from the glare of governments, rights organizations and media in democratic countries, in order to keep alive the false narrative that people can still operate freely in a city that lives and dies as an international financial centre.
That can’t happen. Thankfully, it isn’t. The U.S. State Department and the European Union have both this year called on Hong Kong to release Mr. Lai and other pro-democracy activists being held as political prisoners under the NSL.
Media groups around the world have also called for Mr. Lai’s release, as have 10 senior Catholic leaders in eight countries (Mr. Lai is Catholic). Shamefully, the British government has been reluctant to make the same demand, even though Mr. Lai is solely a British citizen.
This week, Mr. Lai’s son, Sebastien Lai, was at the Globe before proceeding on to Ottawa to urge Canada to join the chorus of international voices calling for his father’s release. He met with Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly Tuesday evening.
As a champion of press freedoms, the Canadian government must call for Mr. Lai’s release. But it should go further and make it clear that it no longer considers Hong Kong a safe place for Canadians to do business. How could it be, when the citizen of a foreign country, like Mr. Lai, can find themselves behind bars for saying the wrong thing?
The world needs to see Hong Kong for what it has become. This week, Hong Kong officials were scrambling to get out the vote for district council elections. Since the arrival of the NSL, only pre-approved “patriots” are allowed to run, and voters have a say over fewer positions than ever – with the rest going to appointees suitable to Beijing. Turnout could fall below 30 per cent, after it had reached 70 per cent in previous elections when pro-democracy candidates were allowed to run.
As well, the city is faced with a mass exodus and a decline in the number of foreign companies based there. According to The Wall Street Journal, mainland Chinese companies with their regional headquarters in Hong Kong now outnumber American ones for the first time in at least three decades.
This year, the U.S. State Department said that, because of the imposition of the NSL, “rule of law risks that were formerly limited to mainland China have now increasingly become a potential concern in Hong Kong.”
Mr. Lai’s imprisonment and his unjust prosecution under the NSL are the human symbol of this new reality. Canada needs to be among the countries that stand up for his release. But it must also make it clear to Beijing that it can no longer consider Hong Kong to be the safe place to do business that it once was. That economic lever is the best one available to secure Mr. Lai’s freedom.
We have to add a coda to this. In July, this space called on Beverley McLachlin, the former chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, to resign from Hong Kong’s Court of Final appeal. This is more imperative than ever. Her presence on the court only serves to lend credibility to Hong Kong’s sham justice system and, by extension, to Beijing’s oppression.