Jimmy LAI

A writer, publisher and activist with UK citizenship, Jimmy Lai has been held in solitary confinement since December 2020 following his initial brief detention in August 2020 on multiple charges for his journalism and pro-democracy activism (see Case lists 2023-3024, 2022, and 2020). Since his arrest, Jimmy Lai has served sentences relating to four convictions of unauthorised assembly; these expired in September 2022. On 10 December 2022, Lai was sentenced to a further five years and nine months’ imprisonment for violating the terms of a commercial lease. 

On 18 December 2023, a new trial commenced on two counts of ‘conspiracy to collude with foreign forces’ under Hong Kong’s National Security Law (NSL). Lai was also charged with ‘conspiracy to produce seditious publications’ under Hong Kong’s colonial-era sedition law, with the prosecution citing 161 editions of Apple Daily, which Lai had founded in 1995, as ‘examples of seditious publications[...] with a view to polluting the minds of the impressionable ones.’ Jimmy Lai has pleaded not guilty to all charges. On 26 September 2024, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found Lai’s ongoing detention to be arbitrary and called for his immediate release. On 20 November 2024, Lai testified for the first time after the NSL trial was adjourned for four months. The trial was ongoing at the end of the year. 

Jimmy Lai, born on 8 December 1947, is a veteran human rights and pro-democracy activist and owner of the now-defunct Apple Daily newspaper, which was once regarded as Hong Kong’s most prolific pro-democracy news outlet before it was forced to close on 24 June 2021. Lai is also the author of over 20 books ranging from autobiographies to essays on entrepreneurship and his love of food. On 21 September 2024, Lai was named as recipient of PEN Canada’s One Humanity Award.