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EDITORIAL: Lai’s testimony in court has highlighted this heroic Chinese Catholic’s unwavering determination to tell the truth – no matter the personal cost.
Media mogul Jimmy Lai, who has been wrongfully held in solitary confinement for nearly four years for his support of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, continues to testify in his own defense, testifying to both his Catholic faith and his innocence.
Lai’s testimony, which began on November 20, exposes the weakness of the charges against him. But more than that, it highlights this heroic Chinese Catholic’s unwavering determination to tell the truth – no matter the personal cost.
Of course, the truth never had anything to do with the trumped-up charges against Lai. Local Chinese authorities allege he conspired with a wide range of foreign actors, including senior members of the Trump administration, with the aim of separating Hong Kong from Chinese control. This is a total fiction. Lai’s ‘crime’ as a pro-democracy publisher Apple daily newspaper, would ensure that its publication would accurately report on Beijing’s continued betrayal of its 1997 promises to preserve Hong Kong’s existing civil liberties for at least 50 years, which the communist regime set as a condition for securing the handover of Britain’s control of its former colony.
To stop this journalistic truth-telling, the Hong Kong police raided Apple daily‘s offices in August 2020 and led Lai away in handcuffs, shortly after a draconian new national security law came into effect. In 2021, he was convicted on fraud charges and sentenced to six years in prison. If convicted of the more serious conspiracy and sedition charges he now faces, he could face an additional life sentence.
None of this intimidated Lai. When he finally appeared in court to defend himself, he strongly refuted the prosecution’s claims that he had promoted Hong Kong’s independence from China. He gave specific instructions to the staff of Apple daily He testified that he would never do that, emphasizing that the newspaper’s priorities are instead “actually the core values of the people of Hong Kong,” including the “rule of law, freedom, pursuit of democracy, freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly.”
Lai told the court that he decided to become a newspaper publisher specifically “to engage in the provision of information, which means freedom.” And he always tried to say only things he believed to be true. “For the truth prevails in God’s kingdom, and that is good enough for me,” he explained.
The depth of Lai’s commitment to truth and freedom, anchored in his Christian faith, has amazed even his closest friends.
“Jimmy believes that we were created for the truth and that it is our job to speak the truth, especially when no one else will, at any cost.” Wall Street Journal columnist William McGurn said at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington in 2022. “How else could a man so willingly trade the comfortable life of a Hong Kong multi-millionaire for the prison cell of a Chinese dissident?”
McGurn, who befriended Lai while living in Hong Kong in the 1990s and who became his godfather when Lai converted to Catholicism in 1997, believes the criminal case has become a fiasco for the governments of China and Hong Kong because they have failed to break the rules. Lai’s ghost.
“With all this, the trial only shows what everyone in Hong Kong already knows: Jimmy was an incredibly committed publisher whose journalism proved very popular,” he said. wrote last month.
President-elect Donald Trump has closely followed Lai’s case and has vowed to push for his release upon taking office. Chinese authorities may be inclined to comply with Trump’s request — if only to save themselves from further embarrassment from Lai’s continued testimony of the truth from his prison cell. In the meantime, it is critical that we continue to pray for this brave, good man.
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