The Hong Kong pro-democracy tycoon, arrested in 2020, gets a day in court

Unlike other Hong Kong tycoons who were careful not to provoke China’s leaders, Jimmy Lai had long been a proud rebel. He founded a newspaper with a decidedly anti-Beijing slant. He was a prominent face at mass protests for democracy. He lobbied American officials to protest against the city’s declining autonomy.

Than, in 2020, Mr. Lai was arrested and became one of the first high-profile targets of a national security law imposed by Beijing to crush the opposition. On Monday, after three years in prison and unusually long procedural delays, Mr. Lai finally gets his day in court.

Mr Lai, 76, has been charged under the national security law with “conspiracy with foreign forces” and faces up to life in prison if convicted. He is currently serving a five-year prison sentence in a fraud case, apparently in solitary confinement. Human rights activists, as well as the governments of the United States and Britain, have dismissed the charges against Mr. Lai as untrue and politically motivated.

“Jimmy Lai is a symbol of a blatant and very direct attack on what the Communist Party considers the most important thing: solid and thorough control” by the party over Hong Kong, said Willy Lam, an expert on China at The Jamestown Foundation . in Washington.

Initially, authorities had tolerated Mr. Lai, likely to show that Beijing respected the city’s autonomy, Mr. Lam said, but they took a hard line against him after the massive pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong in 2019.” Xi Jinping’s leadership has become much more conservative, if not reactionary,” Mr Lam said.

Authorities have used the national security law not only against Mr Lai, but also to more broadly silence dissent in the city. Their investigations have forced independent media to close, ousted pro-democracy lawmakers and destroyed the rowdy demonstrations on campuses and streets that once distinguished Hong Kong from the rest of China and gave it a reputation for being vibrant, liberal and open.

Security was tight around the Hong Kong courthouse where Mr Lai’s trial was due to take place. Police dogs were led around the entrance to the courthouse while dozens of police vans, including armored vehicles, lined nearby roads. Alexandra Wong, a veteran activist known as “Grandma Wong,” waved the Union Jack and evoked Hong Kong’s colonial past before Britain handed it back to China. She shouted: ‘Support Jimmy Lai! Stand for the truth!” before being fenced into a locked area by police officers.

Since Mr. Lai’s arrest, the city has changed dramatically. It is now led by John Lee, a former security chief who led the crackdown that put dozens of opposition figures like Mr. Lai behind bars. The government also now has the power to investigate candidates running for elections, disqualifying anyone deemed disloyal to Beijing. Residents are encouraged to spy on their colleagues and neighbors.

Mr. Lai is charged with conspiring with foreign forces under the national security law, as well as sedition based on comments he made online and articles published by his newspaper, Apple Daily.

Mr Lai’s trial will be the highest-profile test yet of how Hong Kong’s British legal system will interpret and enforce Beijing’s national security law, which vaguely defines political crimes. China says the law is needed to eradicate threats to Beijing’s sovereignty, but activists and scholars say the law will erode the city’s vaunted judicial independence.

Mr Lai’s prosecution has been marred by violations of his right to a fair trial. Human Rights Watch said this, noting that he is being denied a jury trial, which was once a standard practice in Hong Kong when suspects faced harsh sentences. Instead, the three judges hearing Mr. Lai’s case belong to a group chosen by Hong Kong’s leader to hear national security cases.

The rights group also noted Mr Lai’s lengthy detention before the trial and his being denied the lawyer of his choice. Mr Lai had tried to be represented by Timothy Owen, a leading British lawyer, but authorities excluded Mr Owen from the case.

The charges against Mr. Lai are based in part on messages he posted on social media and articles published in Apple Daily urging Western governments to impose sanctions on Hong Kong and China. Prosecutors argued that such calls constituted a violation under the national security law. Mr Lai is also charged with sedition.

Mr. Lai, who was born on the mainland and moved to Hong Kong at the age of 12, was not always a thorn in Beijing’s side. For a time, his story had been one of opportunity and success in Hong Kong, working his way up from the factory floor to make a fortune building Giordano, a clothing store chain that opened stores across Asia.

But in 1989, as student activists in Chinese cities pushed for more say in their government, Lai’s politics hardened. He printed protest T-shirts and banners in support of activists who flooded the streets of Beijing. After Chinese forces killed hundreds, possibly thousands, of protesters occupying Tiananmen Square, Mr. Lai decided to become a publisher, launching Next Magazine in 1990 and Apple Daily in 1995. We are actually delivering freedom,” Mr. Lai said in a 2020 interview with The New York Times.

He angered authorities in 1996 by insulting Li Peng, the Chinese premier who ordered the 1989 crackdown on student protesters. After that, authorities in China began closing Giordano stores and Mr. Lai decided to sell his shares in the clothing sector to sell and concentrate on publishing.

Over the past decade, Mr. Lai became the most important figure in Hong Kong’s opposition media. His media gave mainstream coverage to the pro-democracy protesters in 2014, when they occupied parts of the city during what became known as the Umbrella Movement, and again in 2019 and 2020. He has been a frequent target, both verbally and physically: pro – The Beijing media have long vilified him, and the entrance to his home, a 1930s villa on a leafy street in Kowloon, has bombed.

In 2020, after Beijing imposed the new security law on Hong Kong, authorities quickly raided the offices of Apple Daily. Mr Lai was arrested and subsequently released on bail. The newspaper was forced to close in 2021 after several top editors and writers and a senior executive from Mr Lai’s media group were also charged with “conspiracy to commit collusion” with foreign forces. Last year these were former employees pleaded guilty..

In August, The Associated Press has released rare images and photographs of Mr Lai in Stanley Prison, a maximum security prison, where he spent 23 hours a day in solitary confinement. The AP reported that Mr. Lai, who was seen in the photos wearing a brown prison uniform, was released for only 50 minutes a day to exercise alone in a small room topped with barbed wire.

Mr. Lai’s son, Sebastien Lai, said in an interview that he had not seen Mr. Lai in three years, noting that his father looked thinner in the images released by the AP. Sebastien Lai is lobbying Western officials, including David Cameron, the British Foreign Secretary, and the United Nations, to pressure Hong Kong to release his father.

“I think every day he is in prison he shows that these freedoms that he fought for, these freedoms that the people of Hong Kong fought for, cannot be traded,” Sebastien Lai said in an interview.

“I am incredibly proud of my father’s work,” he added. “And I’ll keep fighting until he gets out of jail.”

Hong Kong authorities have denounced Sebastien Lai’s campaign his testimony in Geneva at the United Nations Human Rights Council in June – as “foreign interference” in legal proceedings.