Hong Kong Media Mogul Lai Pleads Not Guilty to National Security Charges

Jimmy Lai outside West Kowloon Magistrates' Court in Hong Kong on Sept. 18, 2020. Sung Pi-lung/The Epoch Times

Jimmy Lai, a prominent publisher and pro-democracy activist, pleaded not guilty in Hong Kong on Jan. 2 in a landmark trial, as prosecutors laid out details of what they called colluding with foreign forces threatening national security.

Mr. Lai, founder of the now-shuttered pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, faces two counts of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces under the national security law, including calling for international sanctions against China and Hong Kong officials. The 76-year-old also was charged with conspiracy to publish seditious publications.

According to Reuters, Mr. Lai said “not guilty” as each charge was read, appearing calm as he sat in a glass defendants dock surrounded by guards and a court filled with family, supporters, and foreign diplomats.

Mr. Lai, an outspoken critic of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), has been incarcerated since December 2020, following his arrest during a sweeping clampdown on the city’s pro-democracy activists under a national security law Beijing imposed on Hong Kong four years ago.

Mr. Lai is one of the most high-profile figures to be charged under the draconian national security law, which criminalizes anything the CCP considers secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with a foreign country. If convicted, he could face life imprisonment.

After years of legal proceedings amid international pressure, Mr. Lai’s trial opened at the West Kowloon Law Courts building on Dec. 18, 2023. His case has been denounced by Western countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, which said the trial is politically motivated.

On Jan. 2, the prosecution outlined for the first time in court the main details of the case, including Mr. Lai’s meeting with senior U.S. officials in 2019, which they said was evidence he colluded with foreign forces.

Prosecutor Anthony Chau described Mr. Lai as “a radical political figure” who “conspired with others to bring into hatred and stir up opposition” against the city’s government and the central authorities in Beijing.

Prosecutors presented a color-coded chart in which Mr. Lai’s image was shown alongside pictures of former U.S. President Donald Trump, former Vice President Mike Pence, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Others who were said to be Mr. Lai’s “external political connections” shown in the chart include former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and individuals in Taiwan.

Even before the national security law was enacted, the prosecutor said Mr. Lai had requested that foreign countries, particularly the United States, leverage sanctions against Chinese and Hong Kong officials.

Mr. Chau cited a total of 161 articles published on Apple Daily between 2019 and 2021 as “examples of seditious publications ... with a view to polluting the minds of the impressionable ones.”

Apply Daily, a popular local newspaper that frequently was critical of the city’s government and the communist regime in Beijing, was forced to shut down in 2021 after hundreds of police raided its newsroom, arrested five executives, and froze key assets.

Mr. Lai was accused of conspiring with three companies and six former executives linked to Apple Daily and several others, including U.S. citizen Mark Simon, to produce seditious publications and to collude with foreign forces.

Mr. Chau alleged that Mr. Lai “acted together with, inter alia, the senior management of his company and orchestrated a conspiracy with the ... freedom advocacy group ‘Stand with Hong Kong, Fight for Freedom.’”

‘Show Trial’

Mr. Lai was also accused of conspiring with several foreign parliament members and Hong Kong human rights activists—such as Andy Li, Finn Lau, and others—to lobby foreign countries, including Australia, Britain, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, the Czech Republic, and the United States, for sanctions.

The move drew the immediate condemnation of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), which said the accusation against its members—including its British-based executive director, Luke de Pulford, and Japan-based director, Shiori Yamao—in Mr. Lai’s case is “an extraordinary act of territorial overreach and unacceptable infringement of the rights of foreign citizens. ”

“Far from constituting a crime, working with Mr. Lai to uphold fundamental freedoms in Hong Kong would have been a matter of pride. In reality, however, evidence presented to prove that Mr Lai was responsible for IPAC’s Hong Kong activities is fabricated. He was not involved—directly or indirectly—in any of it,” the group said.

Others alleged to be intermediaries or agents whom Mr. Lai collaborated with include Benedict Rogers, chief executive of UK-based rights group Hong Kong Watch, who responded by calling it “a show trial.”

“The ‘crime’ Mr. Lai is accused of is talking with foreign politicians and activists, including myself, and engaging in journalism—which, as the publisher of a major newspaper in Hong Kong, ought to be regarded as entirely normal legitimate activity,” he said in a statement.

“Mr Lai’s trial illustrates just how dramatically and extensively Hong Kong’s basic freedoms and the rule of law have been dismantled.”

Reuters contributed to this report.