Jimmy Lai

Jimmy Lai is a renowned campaigner for democracy in Hong Kong. He is a journalist and media owner who has sacrificed his liberty to defend press freedom. Jimmy Lai is 77, a British citizen, and prisoner of conscience, unjustly imprisoned in solitary confinement in Hong Kong for more than four years. Throughout his professional life, JimmyLai has been a fearless and outspoken critic of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and an unwavering advocate for democracy.

Following the student protests in China in 1989, and the Tiananmen Square massacre,Jimmy Lai turned his mind to publishing. He saw journalism as a way of ensuring Hong Kongers’ access to the truth, which he considers a vital prerequisite to freedom for the Hong Kong people and accountability for the CCP’s human rights violations in Tiananment Square and beyond. Central to what became his publishing group, Next Digital Limited, was the title Apple Daily, one of Hong Kong’s most popular pro-democratic Chinese-language newspapers. Under his leadership, Apple Daily undertook public interest journalism until it was forcibly shut down by the authoriites in June 2021.

Jimmy Lai has been arrested multiple times and convicted on politically-motivated, sham charges. He now faces the possibility of life in prison if convicted of alleged sedition and alleged “collusion with foreign forces” under the draconian national security law Beijing imposed on Hong Kong in 2020. These charges are said to arise out of his work as a journalist and publisher and his peaceful pro-democracy activism. His case is emblematic of the crackdown on media freedom, civil society, and the rule of law in Hong Kong.