Hong Kong
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Days earlier than profitable his second presidential time period, Donald Trump made a daring promise: if he returned to the White House, he would free a pugnacious, self-made billionaire from a Hong Kong jail.
“100% I’ll get him out. He’ll be easy to get out,” Trump declared in a podcast interview in October, radiating his trademark confidence.
Nearly ten months later, that tycoon Jimmy Lai – a pro-democracy firebrand and protracted thorn in Beijing’s aspect – stays behind bars.
The 77-year-old media mogul has spent greater than 1,600 days in a maximum-security jail, a lot of it in solitary confinement, staring down the risk of spending the remainder of his life there.
Lai, the outspoken founding father of the now-shuttered Apple Daily – a fiercely pro-democracy tabloid newspaper recognized for years of blistering broadsides towards the Chinese Communist get together until its forced closure – has turn out to be a logo of Beijing’s sweeping nationwide safety crackdown on the once-freewheeling monetary hub.
In his landmark trial, Lai stands accused of two counts of colluding with international forces – against the law punishable by life in jail beneath the 2020 nationwide safety legislation imposed by Beijing – and a separate sedition cost. He has pleaded not responsible to all costs.
On Thursday, a Hong Kong court is set to hear closing arguments from each protection and prosecutors, paving the method for a verdict that can decide Lai’s fate – and check Trump’s resolve to make good on his pledge whereas attempting to clinch a commerce cope with Chinese chief Xi Jinping.
In the October interview, Trump responded “100% yes” when requested by podcast host Hugh Hewitt whether or not he would communicate to Xi to get Lai out of the nation if he received the election.
Then, as president, Trump pledged to elevate Lai’s case as a part of US commerce talks with China.
“I think talking about Jimmy Lai is a very good idea,” he informed Hewitt in a subsequent radio interview in May, simply days earlier than officers met in Geneva for the first spherical of talks. “We’ll put it down, and we’ll put it down as part of the negotiation.”
Two people who find themselves shut to Lai and have been campaigning for his launch stated they have been informed that US officers did carry up Lai’s case with their Chinese counterparts throughout the talks.
“We understand it was informally brought up at trade talks, but we don’t know the context of it,” stated Lai’s prime aide Mark Simon, referring to the negotiations in Geneva.
Mark Clifford, president of the Washington-based Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, stated that earlier than commerce negotiators met once more in London in June, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent “had it as a mission” from Trump to make sure that Lai’s launch was a part of the talks.
“I’m told that Bessent was tasked by the President and made it as part of his mission,” stated Clifford, who has been lobbying the US Congress for Lai’s launch. “Going into those talks, like immediately before those talks, Bessent told people that he was tasked by Trump with getting Jimmy out.”
Responding to NCS’s request for remark, White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly stated: “As President Trump said, Jimmy Lai should be released, and he wants to see that happen.”
China’s Foreign Affairs Ministry and Commerce Ministry didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, stated he was not conscious of the “specific details” when requested about whether or not Lai’s case was introduced up in the commerce talks.
“We strongly oppose external forces using judicial cases as a pretext to interfere in China’s internal affairs or to smear and undermine Hong Kong’s rule of law,” Liu added.
The Hong Kong authorities has additionally stood agency, urging “any external forces” – with out mentioning the US or Trump – to instantly cease interfering in the metropolis’s inner affairs and judicial course of.
“Any attempt by any country, organization, or individual to interfere with the judicial proceedings in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region by means of political power, thereby resulting in a defendant not being able to have a fair trial that one should receive, is a reprehensible act undermining the rule of law of Hong Kong and should be condemned,” the metropolis’s Security Bureau stated in a press release.
Lai’s Thursday court listening to comes simply days after Trump prolonged a commerce truce with China, giving each side one other 90 days to strive to settle their commerce and tech disputes.
In latest weeks, Trump has eased his confrontational stance towards Beijing, and has spoken enthusiastically about visiting China at Xi’s invitation in the “not too distant future” if a deal is reached.
As a part of that push, he has rolled again sure export controls on China – together with reversing a ban on gross sales of Nvidia’s H20 chips. This week, he opened the door to sending China extra superior AI chips.
Experts on US-China relations say it stays unclear whether or not Trump can ship on his pledge to free Lai, a China-born British nationwide, citing his transactional type and unpredictable coverage shifts.
“Jimmy Lai is British, not American. Given the high profile of his case, I doubt that China will be willing to make a deal,” stated Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center suppose tank in Washington.
“But the trade talks are higher priority for Beijing. If Trump prioritizes Jimmy Lai’s release, Beijing will be able to negotiate although it all depends on the terms.”
Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a senior researcher at the Asia Centre suppose tank in Paris, stated the uncertainty cuts each methods.
“How much pressure Trump will put on Xi to reach such a deal? Hard to say because the US administration has so many other priorities ahead of Jimmy Lai,” he stated. “But the big question is whether Xi will accept such a quid pro quo?”
But Lai’s household and supporters stay hopeful.
“We’re incredibly grateful that the president knows about my father’s case and has said that he will free him,” stated Sebastien Lai, Jimmy Lai’s son. “The president has a tremendous track record in freeing prisoners around the world. So hearing this gives our family a lot of hope.”
Others observe the willingness of Trump administration officers to discussing Lai’s case, in addition to his broad backing in Washington and inside the Catholic group.
“I know people in the Trump administration. We talk about it. They bring it up. The Catholic community has reached out to the White House and made their voice known. Various senators have reached out,” stated Simon, the Lai aide.
Lai’s fortunes, each private and monetary, are inextricably tied to the transformation of Hong Kong.
Born in mainland China, he arrived in the British-ruled metropolis in the backside of a fishing boat at age 12 and filth poor. He labored his method up the manufacturing unit ground of a textile firm to turn out to be a clothes tycoon – a rags-to-riches story that echoed Hong Kong’s personal rise as a bustling industrial hub.
But China’s lethal 1989 crackdown on scholar protesters in Tiananmen Square politicized Lai and created one thing of a rarity in Hong Kong: a rich tycoon keen to overtly criticize Beijing’s leaders. He moved out of the clothes enterprise and selected a brand new function – media baron.
Lai based Apple Daily in 1995, two years earlier than Hong Kong was handed over to China. The outspoken writer and his newspaper have been at the forefront of the metropolis’s pro-democracy motion, together with the sweeping anti-government protests in 2019.
A recognized vocal supporter of Trump and a religious Catholic, Lai traveled to Washington at the top of the 2019 protests, the place he met with then Vice President Mike Pence and different US politicians to focus on the political scenario in the metropolis.
The media mogul had lengthy held a conviction that Trump and the US authorities shouldn’t shrink back from supporting Hong Kong’s civil liberties, that are key for the metropolis’s standing as a conduit between China and worldwide markets.
“Mr. President, you’re the only one who can save us,” Lai stated in an interview with NCS in 2020 weeks earlier than he was arrested. “If you save us, you can stop China’s aggressions. You can also save the world.”
Prosecutors have argued that Lai’s actions amounted to lobbying for sanctions towards Beijing and Hong Kong, an act prohibited beneath the nationwide safety legislation that was imposed following 2019’s big and generally violent pro-democracy protests and has reworked the metropolis. Lai’s legal professionals have countered that Lai had stopped these acts after the nationwide safety legislation got here into impact on June 30, 2020.
Taking the stand in his personal protection in November, Lai stated he had by no means spoken with Trump. “I don’t think he knew me. I think his aides knew me and briefed him about me,” he stated.
In Washington, efforts to name for Lai’s launch have continued via Joe Biden’s presidency and into Trump’s second time period.
In March, a bipartisan group of US House representatives introduced a invoice to rename the avenue in entrance of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in Washington as “1 Jimmy Lai Way.” That similar month, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio – a former prime China hawk in the Senate – stated in an interview that getting Lai out of jail was a “priority.”
“We’ve raised it in every possible form and they know that it’s important to us,” Rubio stated, referring to Chinese officers. “It’s not something we’ve forgotten about and that it remains a priority, and I think other countries around the world are making the same point as well to the Chinese.”
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer introduced up the case of Lai in his first assembly with Xi, on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Brazil in November 2024.
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy has additionally urged Lai’s launch, calling his imprisonment “cruel and unusual punishment” and describing the case as “a priority for the UK government” — remarks that drew a sharp rebuke from Beijing.
So far all of Hong Kong’s nationwide safety trials have been heard by a panel of specifically chosen judges, not juries – a departure from the metropolis’s widespread legislation custom. The closing arguments are anticipated to take a number of days and it might be weeks, and even months, earlier than the judges render their verdict.
People campaigning for Lai’s launch argue that given his previous age and frail well being, it’ll be extra bother for Beijing and Hong Kong authorities to preserve him in jail than set him free.
“If he dies in prison, he’s going to be trouble forever. He’ll be a martyr. He’ll be a symbol of resistance. He’ll be a symbol of the cruelty of the Chinese Communist regime. And why would (Beijing) want that?” stated Clifford, who wrote a biography of Lai titled “The Troublemaker.”
Simon, the prime aide, stated Lai has to be convicted first, earlier than issues can begin transferring ahead to get him out of jail.
While Washington has used diplomacy to safe the launch of political prisoners in mainland China in the previous, such interventions could be uncommon — if not unprecedented — in Hong Kong, which has its personal separate authorized system, consultants say.
Paul Harris, former chairman of Hong Kong’s Bar Association, stated the proven fact that Lai is in Hong Kong doesn’t create an impediment to his launch. Under Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law, the chief government has the energy – and the obligation – in acceptable instances to pardon convicted prisoners or commute their sentences, he defined.
“So that power is there, and it’s a matter for the Chief Executive’s decision whether he wants to use it, and one can safely assume that if the President of China wants him to use it, he will use it,” Harris stated, referencing Xi.
“Jimmy Lai is in the second half of his 70s. He has certain health problems. It is totally consistent with the rule of law, as it has always operated, to release elderly prisoners with health problems. And so if the will is there, it can be done.”
But for supporters of Lai, the marketing campaign to free him is a race towards time.
Sebastien Lai stated he’s deeply involved about his father’s deteriorating well being.
“He’s 77 this year, turning 78 at the end of the year, any type of incarceration is incredibly worrying for his health, never mind the solitary confinement and the diabetes,” he stated, calling his father’s extended solitary confinement “a form of torture.”
“And during the summer, Hong Kong goes up to 30, almost 40 degrees, and he’s in a little concrete cell, so he bakes in there. We’re incredibly worried about him.”
The Hong Kong authorities stated it strongly condemns what it calls “misleading statements” about the remedy of Jimmy Lai in custody.
“The remarks by Sebastien Lai regarding Lai Chee-ying’s solitary confinement are completely fact-twisting, reflecting a malicious intention to smear and attack the HKSAR Government,” it stated in a press release, including Lai had requested his elimination from common jail inhabitants.
Sebastien Lai stated his concern for his father is additionally layered with delight.
“I’m very proud that someone like my father has decided to do what he did – campaigning for democracy for the last 30 years, staying in Hong Kong when it mattered, when the national security law was coming down…and almost acting like a lightning rod.”
“On a personal level, it’s devastating. But on a grander, historical level, it’s important to keep watch.”