'#FreeJimmyLai: A call to action for world leaders', Benedict Rogers

It's time to speak with Xi Jinping as Hong Kong’s most prominent political prisoner completes 1,500 days in jail today

Today, Hong Kong’s most prominent political prisoner, media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai, marks 1,500 days in jail. That is 1,500 days too many and he should not be detained a day longer.

Lai, now 77, a British citizen and a devout Catholic, is held in solitary confinement and reportedly only permitted 50 minutes of exercise per day.

That means he spends over 23 hours daily without natural light, fresh air, or human contact except with prison guards. A diabetic, he has been denied independent medical care and concerns are growing about his failing health.

For over four years, since his arrest in December 2020, Lai has been imprisoned on multiple fabricated charges. These include a 13-month sentence for lighting a candle and saying a prayer at a vigil to mark the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and a 14-month sentence for participating in a peaceful protest in 2019, sentences he has now served.

Over the past four years, I have lit candles all over the world for Lai — in cathedrals, churches and chapels in Rome, Milan, Verona and Trento, along the shores of the lakes of northern Italy, on Greek islands, as well as in Prague, Warsaw, Krakow, Geneva, Brussels, Oslo, Ottawa, Toronto, Washington, DC, Westminster, Taipei, Seoul, Tokyo and beyond.

I have lit many more candles and said many more prayers for other human rights crises, and joined countless peaceful protests over the years.

If lighting a candle, saying a prayer and joining a peaceful protest is a crime, deserving 13 or 14 months in jail per candle, prayer, or protest, I should be locked up for the rest of my life.

Tomorrow, I will join hundreds of other protesters in London in a demonstration against China’s proposed new mega-embassy in Britain’s historic old Royal Mint. I will speak briefly at the protest. In so doing, I will be violating Hong Kong’s National Security Law — as I do most days — given its extraterritorial application. That illustrates the absurdity of Hong Kong’s injustice system — and the outrageous injustice of Lai’s incarceration.

Another sentence Lai received — on a completely fabricated, politically motivated and ridiculous fraud charge — was for six years, levied, ironically, on Dec. 10, 2022, International Human Rights Day. He has just under two years of that sentence to serve.

And what was it for? The use of office space in the headquarters of the Apple Daily, the newspaper he founded and owned — and which the regime forced to shut down in 2021.

As the proprietor, the idea that he should not use a room in his newspaper’s building as a personal office is mad.

And even if there was some lease violation, in any sane legal system it would be a civil matter and not a custodial offence.

But Hong Kong is no longer a sane system. And the baseless fraud charge was clearly designed to damage his reputation and add to his years behind bars.

But if the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime in Beijing has its way, the past few years were merely a prelude to the trial of Lai’s life.

Although he has spent 1,500 days in jail, he has not yet even concluded his trial under Hong Kong’s draconian National Security Law, which began well over a year ago.

He has not completed his defence, he is still at least a few months away from a verdict, and when it comes, the sentence he is likely to receive will be a minimum of 10 years under the law.

And Beijing is not expected to err on the side of leniency.

So 1,500 days in, all that is to say is that unless something changes, Lai could well spend the rest of his life in jail. In other words, he is likely to die in jail.

I know Lai personally. He is one of the most inspiring, remarkable, extraordinary people of immense courage and integrity I have ever had the privilege to meet. I have been privileged to meet quite many remarkable people — brave dissidents and human rights defenders, political and religious leaders, journalists, and lawyers across different places of persecution, repression, and conflict. But Mr Lai is truly among the greatest.

A brilliant new biography by my friend Mark Clifford, aptly titled The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong's Greatest Dissident, and China's Most Feared Critic, describes, how Lai fled famine in Mao Zedong’s China at the age of 12, as a stowaway on a boat to Hong Kong. He worked his way up from rags-to-riches, from child laborer in garment sweatshops to factory manager to establishing his own hugely successful retail business and fashion chain.

When the Tiananmen massacre in Beijing occurred in 1989, he moved into the media business as a way of supporting the values of democracy, freedom, and human rights and challenging Beijing’s tyranny.

At any moment, he could have left Hong Kong. He has beautiful properties in Taipei, Kyoto, London and Paris, owns hotels in Canada and has plenty of friends in the United States and beyond. He has a British passport.

He could have gone anywhere, and enjoyed a comfortable and peaceful life of wealth and freedom. But he sacrificed it all for his principles, in the knowledge that a jail cell could be his home for the remainder of his life.

Two nights ago in London, Mark Clifford’s biography of Lai was launched, and the last governor of Hong Kong Chris Patten gave a keynote address. The passion, wit, wisdom and intensity with which Lord Patten spoke provided a reminder for anyone who needed it — why Lai’s case matters.

The freedom of the human spirit — the freedom to believe, to worship, to speak, to protest, to write, to publish, to create, to initiate, to build and to do — is the most valuable gift any human being could have. It is a right all human beings should enjoy, but too many people — across Asia and the world — are denied.

Jimmy Lai is a symbol not only for Hong Kong but for all free people.

That is why we must mark these 1,500 days. But not as an act of commemoration or memorial.

Lai is still alive and, in many ways, though he is in a jail cell. He is freer than ever, because he has not submitted his mind, his will, his conscience, or his spirit to his captors. He is freer within the bars of his cell than the many political and business leaders who kowtow to Beijing and sacrifice their values on the altar of mammon, angling for deals which very often do not deliver.

No, 1,500 is not an anniversary. It is a call to action.

To US President Donald Trump and his Secretary of State Marco Rubio; to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Foreign Secretary David Lammy; to the leaders of the European Union and its member states, as well as Canada, Australia, Japan, Korea and other democracies; to the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the leaders of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN); and to politicians, intellectuals, entrepreneurs, dissidents, artists, writers, journalists, publishers, civil society, religious leaders and people of goodwill throughout the world — let a clarion call go out today: #FreeJimmyLai. Tweet it. Shout it. Write about it. Protest it. Pray it. Sing about it.

World leaders should pick up the phone to Xi Jinping and demand Lai’s release. Public figures should speak out. Let the skies be filled with the call: #FreeJimmyLai.

But there is one particular world leader above all others, whose silence hitherto has been deafening, and who should speak out. And that is Pope Francis.

So from the very depths of my heart, as a 12-year-old Catholic received into the Church by Myanmar’s Cardinal Charles Bo on Palm Sunday 2013 in St Mary’s Cathedral, Yangon, with Lord Alton of Liverpool beside me as my godfather, I plead with the Holy Father: use your voice, your platform and most importantly your prayers to secure the release of one of the world’s most prominent and devout Catholic figures, Jimmy Lai.

Holy Father: this Sunday, when you pray the Angelus over St Peter’s Square, pray — publicly — #FreeJimmyLai.

Holy Father: at the earliest opportunity, please meet with Lai’s courageous son Sebastien. Not as a political act. But as a pastoral one.

And Holy Father: whatever else you choose to do in your engagement with China, please make the release of Jimmy Lai a top priority and a condition for better relations between the Church and Beijing.

With Lai reportedly denied Holy Communion for more than a year, should not his most basic rights to religious freedom, spiritual sustenance, and human dignity be the concern of the Church and the pope, even if not of Beijing?

So, 1,500 days on from his arrest, let all of us, Catholics and people of all faiths and none, priests, religious, cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and laity around the world, if we cherish freedom — whatever our religious or political beliefs – resolve to speak with one resounding, deafening and in the end effective clamor: #FreeJimmyLai.

This article was published in UCA News on 7 February 2025 .