It urged world leaders to call for the journalist’s clemency
The International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute has denounced the 20-year prison sentence laid on 78-year-old British-Hong Kong journalist, businessman and pro-democracy campaigner Jimmy Lai, describing it as “excessively cruel and unjust.”
Lai was convicted on charges of foreign collusion and sedition under Hong Kong’s national security law and a colonial-era sedition law. The sentence is the longest laid down under the NSL.
The IBAHRI pointed out that the Hong Kong High Court judges that convicted him last December had acknowledged Lai’s poor health. The organization said the sentence confirmed that political motivations drove Lai’s two-year trial.
“Jimmy Lai’s case should concern the international community because it exposes profound and well documented failures of legal process in Hong Kong. The proceedings against him have been marked by serious violations of due process and fair trial guarantees, repeatedly identified by UN Special Rapporteurs, international legal bodies and independent civil society organizations,” said Mark Stephens, IBAHRI co-chair, in a statement.
Stephens said the issues with Lai’s case were “not matters of political disagreement, but of legal compliance.” He called on Beijing to step in and ensure that Hong Kong courts complied with China’s international legal obligations.
“Failure to do so risks confirming that these violations are not aberrations, but the accepted operation of the system itself,” Stephens warned.
IBAHRI co-chair Hina Jilani described the sentence as “the final nail in the coffin for the rule of law in Hong Kong.”
“Jimmy Lai’s case has come to represent the deterioration of democracy and international law in Hong Kong. We must not forget him, the eight others sentenced with him, the over 200 others unjustly targeted under the NSL, the hundreds of other journalists, lawyers and democracy supporters who have faced retribution for standing up for the rule of law,” Jilani said in a statement.
Six former executives of Apple Daily, the now-defunct publication founded by Lai, as well as two activists were sentenced to prison terms of 6-10 years. The IBAHRI noted that the United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture had flagged the use of torture to obtain witness testimony.
IBAHRI director Helena Kennedy urged world leaders to call for Lai’s clemency.
“Jimmy Lai has stood firm in the face of authoritarianism, and the show trial he has endured has served to expose the death of democracy in Hong Kong. He cannot be allowed to pay the ultimate price for this. Every world leader – and especially the UK, as he is a British citizen – must call resolutely for his clemency, and return to the UK on compassionate grounds, to live the rest of his life with his family,” Kennedy said in a statement.
The UN’s high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, sought Lai’s immediate release on humanitarian grounds.
