Sebastien Lai is the son of Jimmy Lai and the leader of the #FreeJimmyLai campaign.
Nearly 1 million people around the world are political prisoners, according to the US State Department. These brave men and women have stood up to the harshest and most repressive governments. Some, like Alexei Navalny, have paid with their lives, while others linger in terrible conditions.
My father, Jimmy Lai, is one of these prisoners. He was once one of the most powerful men in Hong Kong. For defending the values that created the conditions for Hong Kong’s prosperity and vibrancy, my father has spent more than four years in solitary confinement.
Freedom of religion, speech, and the press; the right to assembly; and respect for the rule of law don’t seem like radical ideas to most of us. But to the Chinese Communist Party, which has been tightening its control over Hong Kong since the British handover of the city in 1997, these values are anathema.
My father was a threat precisely because he was so reasonable. His newspaper, Apple Daily, reflected the views of the majority of Hong Kongers in plain language, articulating exactly what its citizens were losing as the CCP-backed government undermined their rights and freedoms. As the leading pro-democracy newspaper in the city, it was a thorn in the side of city officials.
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When he was 12, my father escaped poverty and desperation in mainland China as a stowaway on a fishing boat sailing to Hong Kong. Arriving alone, he found work in a glove factory where he slept on a table at night. Factory life was difficult — he is partially deaf today because of the loud, dangerous machinery he worked with — but my father had never been happier. He knew he could build a life for himself in Hong Kong, and he was delighted by the opportunities it gave him to work and educate himself.
By the time he was 20, my father was managing a factory. At 26, he owned one. His hard work and ingenuity made him one of the leading clothing manufacturers and retailers in the region. But in 1989, his life changed unexpectedly as the Tiananmen Square massacre unfolded on television. He felt an enormous kinship with the courageous students, and he was horrified by the violent crackdown that followed.
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He knew that someone would have to defend Hong Kongers’ freedom tenaciously after the handover. He believed if people knew the truth, they would never let their rights slip away. And so he founded a media company in 1995.
Over the next 25 years, my father built the island’s most popular newspaper, a tabloid that grabbed the attention of readers with a mix of gossip, entertainment, hard news, and investigations, grounded in a pro-democracy editorial line. That stance made him a target of the CCP and the city officials it controlled. Mysterious black cars would follow our family around the city. Our home was firebombed more than once. One night in 2013, my parents woke up to the crash of a car slamming into our front gate. The harassment became our background noise. My father continued his work undeterred.
In 2019, more than a quarter of the city’s population took to the streets in peaceful demonstration against legislation that would have allowed extradition of people wanted by the Chinese government from Hong Kong to mainland China. My father’s high profile meant he was an easy target for the city’s authorities, but he fearlessly joined the protesters.
In the summer of 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 lockdowns, local authorities imposed a vague and draconian “national security law” that prohibited almost all criticism of the government. Within months, Apple Daily was raided by hundreds of police officers, and my father was paraded through his own newsroom in handcuffs.
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He was convicted on fraud and other charges that were politically motivated and is currently on trial for violating the national security law. A trial that was expected to last 80 days has stretched to 15 long months and may not end before the end of the year. My father is a 77-year-old British citizen who suffers from diabetes, and he is kept alone in a small cell, often blazing hot, 23 hours a day. He faces the real possibility of life in prison, which, given his age and health, may not be long.
Thankfully, the free world recognizes the deep injustice that has been done to my father. The United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, the United Nations, and the parliaments of Canada and the European Union have all called for his immediate and unconditional release. Support for my father is global and nonpartisan. It would be good for no one, including the CCP, if he were to die a martyr in prison. He needs to be released.
My family has been buoyed by President Trump’s stated commitment to secure my father’s release. Beijing and the Hong Kong government would be wise to go along.
We are enormously grateful for Trump’s support so far, and we’re counting on his leadership. He has a proven track record of securing the release of those wrongly detained abroad. But time is of the essence.
