Hong Kong: the "yellow" restaurant and the newspaper it was
Back in late October, former Apple Daily owner Jimmy Lai -- who has been behind bars after being denied bail while awaiting a national security trial since December 2020 -- was found guilty of fraud along with Wong Wai Keung, the director of administration of the now defunct pro-democracy tabloid’s parent company Next Digital. Specifically, Lai was "found to have violated the terms of the lease for the newspaper’s headquarters" by operating a consulting company that only occupied 0.16 per cent of the area of the Apple Daily offices.
Yesterday, the presiding judge sentenced Lai to five years and nine months imprisonment and Wong -- who had previously been allowed out on bail -- to 21 months in jail for what lawyer Kevin Yam stated "in most developed economies would be treated at most as a civil rental dispute". As some news reports also noted: "Along with the jail sentence, Lai was also fined 2 million Hong Kong
dollars (US$257,000) and disqualified as a company director for eight
years."
It's good to see that this travesty of justice made the international news, and good to see outlets like CNN take the opportunity to point out the following with regards to what's happening in Hong Kong and Jimmy Lai:
Since the security law was imposed by Beijing in 2020, in response to massive anti-government protests, authorities have cracked down on dissent.
Activists, protesters and journalists have been jailed, civil society crippled, and a number of independent news outlets shuttered.Lai, 74, is one of the most high-profile critics of Beijing charged under the law and faces a maximum sentence of life in prison on charges of colluding with foreign forces. He also faces one charge under a colonial-era sedition law, and was sentenced to 13 months in prison in 2021 for participating in an unauthorized protest.
His pro-democracy tabloid Apple Daily was among the newspapers forced to shut down since the implementation of the law, after police raided the newsroom and authorities froze its assets.
Still, the best commentaries and points made about this latest example of lawfare in Hong Kong actually are over on Twitter. For example, a member of the Hong Kong Twitterati who goes by Meowgan has noted that Lai "got longer jail time than two other cases this week. A woman who was found guilty of abusing children at a foster care center (15 months) and a woman who tried to murder their partner. (4 years). So, a lease violation is a bigger crime than hitting kids or stabbing someone" as far as the Hong Kong courts seem to be concerned.
And there's this from Samuel Bickett, the American lawyer who had his own brush with the Hong Kong law after preventing a man -- who later revealed himself to be an undercover cop -- from attacking a youth in the MTR one day back in 2019: "Judge Stanley Chan sentenced Jimmy Lai to 6 years in prison for a minor lease violation. He was using 0.16% of Apple Daily HQ for a separate business. Let’s stop pretending only national security cases are corrupted while others are fine. This was a business case." Also: "As Judge Amanda Woodcock accidentally let slip in a previous wrongful conviction of Jimmy Lai, he’s guilty not because of anything he did, but because he’s Jimmy Lai."
Finally, for now, here's this from another Hong Kong resident (who goes by John deFrog -- for, let's face it, it's not completely safe these days to speak the truth publicly in Hong Kong): "And they're not even done with him yet. All of this will feed into his [National Security Law] case, and any future cases they choose to bring to court. They will not stop until Jimmy Lai dies in jail. That, as far as I can see, is the endgame here, and has been ever since [Apple Daily] was raided" -- the first time back in August 2020, and again on 17th June, 2021.
For the record: Jimmy Lai turned 75 this Thursday (December 8th). And a reminder: he's been someone the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have sought to punish for decades now. As the last governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten, outlined in a BBC interview back in December 2020: "Jimmy Lai is somebody who escaped
from Communism in China, swam when he was a young man, when he was a boy
to get to Hong Kong. He's been a tremendously successful businessman,
and [the CCP] closed down, first of all, his chain of shops in China, and now
they've attacked him personally because he's been running a newspaper
which speaks out in favour of freedom."
In retrospect, it can seem rather amazing that the Chinese Communist regime took so long to subject Jimmy Lai to its particular brand of justice. Sadly, the writing was on the wall from 2020 on (and particularly what has come to be looked upon as Hong Kong's second, scarier handover). And while it's a testimony to Jimmy Lai's courage and belief that God and justice -- as well as history -- remain on his side that he elected not to flee Hong Kong and continue fighting, even from behind bars -- as has been the case for some time now, the truth of the matter is that, more and more, this harsh persecution of him by the authorities is hard to watch, never mind for him to experience. :(
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