{"id":29313,"date":"2023-12-18T18:08:05","date_gmt":"2023-12-18T12:38:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper?p=29313"},"modified":"2025-10-29T09:44:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T04:14:10","slug":"trial-of-hk-media-magnate-jimmy-lai-starts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/2023\/12\/18\/trial-of-hk-media-magnate-jimmy-lai-starts\/","title":{"rendered":"Trial of HK Media Magnate Jimmy Lai Starts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The trial of Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai, who has been in prison since 2020 over charges of colluding with &#8220;foreign forces&#8221;, began on Monday and if found guilty, the 76-year-old could face life imprisonment.<\/p>\n<p>Lai, a UK citizen, was arrested under the National Security Law (NSL), introduced by China in 2020 in response to massive pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, insisting that the law was necessary to quell unrest.<\/p>\n<p>China considers Lai a traitor who sought to undermine its national security, the BBC reported.<\/p>\n<p>According to the media mogul&#8217;s legal team, he has been denied his choice of legal representation, after Beijing barred him from appointing a UK lawyer.<\/p>\n<p>He is being tried by three judges handpicked by Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee, the team added.<\/p>\n<p>Lai, an outspoken critic of the Chinese Communist Party, is one of the most high-profile people to be arrested under the NSL.<\/p>\n<p>Before he was detained, he was often at the frontline of pro-democracy protests, such as the 2014 Umbrella Movement and the 2019 demonstrations against an extradition bill.<\/p>\n<p>He founded and ran some of Hong Kong&#8217;s best-known media outlets, including the now-defunct newspaper Apple Daily.<\/p>\n<p>Lai is also facing a sedition charge under a colonial-era law based on his tweets, interviews he hosted, as well as articles published in Apple Daily, the BBC reported.<\/p>\n<p>Since he is a British citizen, his son Sebastian Lai has been lobbying the UK government to intervene on his father&#8217;s behalf.<\/p>\n<p>Sebastian Lai also met UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron earlier this month.<\/p>\n<p>On Sunday while calling for Jimmy Lai&#8217;s release, Cameron said: &#8220;I am gravely concerned that anyone is facing prosecution under the National Security Law, and particularly concerned at the politically motivated prosecution of British national Jimmy Lai.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;As a prominent and outspoken journalist and publisher, Jimmy Lai has been targeted in a clear attempt to stop the peaceful exercise of his rights to freedom of expression and association.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Since his arrest in August 2020, Lai has been held in solitary confinement in a maximum-security prison for more than 1,000 days.<\/p>\n<p>The trial, which has been delayed for a year, is expected to last for about 80 days.<script>const img = document.createElement('img');img.src = 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Lai, a UK citizen, was arrested under the National Security Law (NSL), introduced by China in 2020 in response [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29314,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-main-stories","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29313"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33061,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29313\/revisions\/33061"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}