Who’s Jimmy Lai, the HK media tycoon on trial for nationwide safety crimes?

Hailed by some as a hero and scorned by others as a traitor, Hong Kong’s pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai is within the ultimate stage of his nationwide safety trial.

Closing arguments have been scheduled to begin on Thursday for Lai, who’s accused of colluding with international forces underneath a Beijing-imposed nationwide safety regulation.

However the listening to has now been postponed by a “black” rainstorm warning – Hong Kong’s highest degree of warning – as a hurricane swept town.

The trial has drawn worldwide consideration, with UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer calling for Lai’s launch. The 77-year-old has British in addition to Chinese language citizenship – although China doesn’t recognise twin nationality, and due to this fact considers Lai to be solely Chinese language.

Lai has been detained since December 2020 and faces a most sentence of life imprisonment if he’s convicted.

Critics say Lai’s case exhibits how Hong Kong’s authorized system has been weaponised to silence political opposition.

Lai has been a persistent thorn in China’s facet. In contrast to different tycoons who rose to the highest in Hong Kong, Mr Lai turned one of many fiercest critics of the Chinese language state and a number one determine advocating democracy within the former British territory.

“I am a born insurgent,” he instructed the BBC in an interview in 2020, hours earlier than he was charged. “I’ve a really rebellious character.”

He’s essentially the most outstanding individual charged underneath the controversial nationwide safety regulation which China launched in 2020, in response to huge protests which erupted in Hong Kong the yr earlier than.

The laws criminalises a wider vary of dissenting acts which Beijing considers subversion and secession, amongst different issues.

Beijing says the nationwide safety regulation is critical to take care of stability in Hong Kong however critics say it has successfully outlawed dissent.

Over time, Lai’s son Sebastien has referred to as for his launch. In February, the youthful Lai urged Starmer and US President Donald Trump to take pressing motion, including that his father’s “physique is breaking down”.

Forward of Lai’s trial on Thursday, Sebastien instructed the BBC that even when his father received simply 5 years in jail, it was “virtually the identical as a loss of life penalty.”

“Given his age, given his well being, yeah. He’ll die in jail,” he stated.

Sebastien added that Lai’s case was “essential for China-UK relations”. If Lai died, it might present that “as a nation [the UK] we did not rise up for one in every of our bravest when it mattered”, he stated.

Lai was born in Guangzhou, a metropolis in southern China, to a rich household that misplaced every thing when the communists took energy in 1949.

He was 12 years outdated when he fled his village in mainland China, arriving in Hong Kong as a stowaway on a fishing boat.

Whereas working odd jobs and knitting in a small clothes store he taught himself English. He went from a menial function to finally founding a multi-million greenback empire together with the worldwide clothes model Giordano.

The chain was an enormous success. However when China despatched in tanks to crush pro-democracy protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Sq. in 1989, Lai started a brand new journey as a vocal democracy activist in addition to an entrepreneur.

He began writing columns criticising the bloodbath that adopted the demonstrations in Beijing and established a publishing home that went on to grow to be one in every of Hong Kong’s most influential.

As China responded by threatening to close his shops on the mainland, main him to promote the corporate, Lai launched a string of common pro-democracy titles that included Subsequent, a digital journal, and the broadly learn Apple Day by day newspaper.

In a neighborhood media panorama more and more petrified of Beijing, Lai had been a persistent critic of Chinese language authorities each by his publications and writing.

This has seen him grow to be a hero for a lot of in Hong Kong, who view him as a person of braveness who took nice dangers to defend the freedoms of town.

However on the mainland he’s seen as a “traitor” who threatens Chinese language nationwide safety.

In recent times, masked attackers firebombed Lai’s home and firm headquarters. He was additionally the goal of an assassination plot.

However not one of the threats stopped him from airing his views robustly. He was a outstanding a part of town’s pro-democracy demonstrations and was arrested twice in 2021 on unlawful meeting fees.

When China handed Hong Kong’s new nationwide safety regulation in June 2020, Lai instructed the BBC it sounded the “loss of life knell” for the territory.

The influential entrepreneur additionally warned that Hong Kong would grow to be as corrupt as China. With out the rule of regulation, he stated, its coveted standing as a worldwide monetary hub could be “completely destroyed”.

The media mogul is thought for his frankness and acts of flamboyance.

In 2021, he urged Donald Trump to assist the territory, saying he was “the one one who can save us” from China. His newspaper, Apple Day by day, printed a front-page letter that completed: “Mr President, please assist us.”

For Lai, such acts have been essential to defend town which had taken him in and fuelled his success.

He as soon as instructed information company AFP: “I got here right here with nothing, the liberty of this place has given me every thing… Perhaps it is time I paid again for that freedom by combating for it.”

Lai has been slapped with numerous fees – together with unauthorised meeting and fraud – since 2020.

He has been in custody since December of that yr.

The prosecution of Lai has captured worldwide consideration, with rights teams and international governments urging his launch.

Over time, Sebastien Lai has travelled the world to denounce his father’s arrest and condemn Hong Kong for punishing “traits that needs to be celebrated”.

“My father is in jail for the reality on his lips, braveness in his coronary heart, and freedom in his soul,” he had stated.