Hong Kong’s High Court has convicted pro-democracy activist and newspaper founder Jimmy Lai on three counts related to accusations he undermined China’s national security, in a widely scrutinized trial.
Lai now faces a life sentence in prison.
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On Monday morning, a three-judge panel found Lai, 78, guilty of two counts of conspiring with foreign forces to threaten national security and one count of conspiring to publish seditious material.
Lai had pleaded not guilty to all charges. He has been in detention since December 2020, when he was arrested amid a series of anti-government protests that rocked Hong Kong.
The case was seen as a test of Hong Kong’s “one country, two systems” principle, established after the former British colony’s handover to China in 1997.
The principle affirmed that Hong Kong was part of China, but in theory it allowed the territory to maintain its own governance and administration structure, separate from Beijing.
But activists say autonomy has come under threat in recent years as China seeks to assert greater control over Hong Kong. The territory, once considered a beacon of free expression in Southeast Asia, has seen its protesters, journalists and publishers arrested and prosecuted in recent years.
On Monday, Judge Esther Toh accused Lai of issuing “constant invitations” to the United States to take action against the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and its ruling Communist Party.
She and her fellow judges, Alex Lee and Susana D’Almada Remedios, delivered an 855-page verdict in the case, describing Lai as the “mastermind” of a criminal conspiracy.
“There is no doubt that the first defendant harbored resentment and hatred toward the PRC for much of his adult life,” Toh told a packed courtroom on Monday.
Human rights groups and the media quickly denounced the verdict, calling it a miscarriage of justice.
“We are outraged that Jimmy Lai, a symbol of press freedom in Hong Kong, was convicted on trumped-up national security charges,” Thibaut Bruttin, director general of Reporters Without Borders, said in a statement.
“This illegal conviction only demonstrates the alarming deterioration of media freedom in the territory,” he added.
“Make no mistake: it was not an individual who was tried, it was the freedom of the press itself, and with this verdict, which was shattered.”
Another free speech organization, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), also denounced Lai’s conviction, calling it an act of “persecution.”
“This decision highlights Hong Kong’s complete disregard for press freedom, which is supposed to be protected by the city’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law,” said Beh Lih Yi, director of the Asia-Pacific group.
“Jimmy Lai’s only crime is running a newspaper and defending democracy.”
Lai is expected to reappear in court on Jan. 12 for a pre-sentencing hearing. It is not yet known whether he will appeal Monday’s verdict.
The trial against him lasted 156 days. Lai himself testified for 52 days, saying he did not call on the United States to impose sanctions or other economic sanctions on China, as the prosecution claimed.
The charges against him fell under the Hong Kong National Security Act 2020, a wide-ranging law passed amid the pro-democracy protests of 2019 and 2020.
The law imposed heavy penalties for actions considered “subversion” or “secession,” criminalizing the Hong Kong independence movement, as well as any criticism of the Chinese Communist Party.
As an outspoken critic of the Beijing government, Lai was quickly charged under the newly imposed law.
Its publication, the Apple Daily, published its first edition in 1995 and became Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy newspaper.
During Lai’s trial, prosecutors presented 161 articles from the newspaper as evidence.
In August 2020, less than two months after the national security law took effect, Lai was arrested for the first time, then released. He was arrested again in December, only to be released and arrested a third time. Since then, he has remained in detention.
In May 2021, authorities froze the assets of Apple Daily. And in June of the same year, five Apple Daily executives, including its editor-in-chief, were arrested during a police raid on the newspaper’s headquarters.
The newspaper printed its final edition that month.
Lai’s defense team and family have repeatedly asked the Hong Kong High Court for leniency, citing Lai’s age and health conditions, including diabetes and high blood pressure.
World leaders, such as US President Donald Trump, have already called for Lai’s release.
