HONG KONG — Pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai was sentenced to 20 years in prison in Hong Kong on Monday after his conviction in a landmark national security trial that has become a symbol of Beijing’s crackdown on dissent in the Chinese territory.
Lai, a 78-year-old media tycoon who was one of the most prominent critics of China’s ruling Communist Party, had denied all charges against him. The U.S. and other governments have criticized the case as politically motivated and a sign of declining press freedom in Hong Kong, a former British colony that returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
Rights groups and members of Lai’s family have also expressed concern about his health after he has spent more than five years in custody, much of it in solitary confinement.
Lai’s son Sebastien Lai said the sentence, the longest given out so far under a Beijing-imposed national security law, was “devastating for our family and life-threatening for my father,” and that it signaled the “total destruction” of the Hong Kong legal system.
“After more than five years of relentlessly persecuting my father, it is time for China to do the right thing and release him before it is too late,” he said in a statement.
Eighteen years of Lai’s sentence are to be served consecutively with another case. Eight co-defendants, including six journalists from Lai’s shuttered Apple Daily newspaper and two activists, received sentences ranging from six years and three months to 10 years. All except Lai had pleaded guilty, and several testified against him.
Dozens of people had lined up for days outside the courthouse in order to secure seats in the public gallery, with a police cordon separating them from reporters and police recording their identity card details. After the sentencing on Monday, supporters of the defendants comforted each other outside the courtroom.
Lai was arrested and charged in 2020, shortly after Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law in response to months of anti-government protests the previous year. Hong Kong authorities say that the law was necessary to restore stability after the protests, which sometimes turned violent, and that Lai’s case has nothing to do with press freedom.
John Lee, Hong Kong’s top leader, said Monday that Lai had used the pro-democracy Apple Daily to “poison the minds” of people in Hong Kong and that his sentence “brings great relief to all.”
Chinese authorities in Hong Kong also said they supported the sentence, while the city’s national security police chief, Steve Li, said concerns about Lai’s health were “exaggerated.”
A Hong Kong government spokesperson said Monday that Lai has received appropriate medical care and that he had asked to be kept separate from other prisoners.
The case has drawn scrutiny from foreign leaders, including President Donald Trump, who had vowed to secure Lai’s release and said he felt “so badly” after Lai was convicted in December on charges of sedition and colluding with foreign forces.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday that Lai’s sentence “shows the world that Beijing will go to extraordinary lengths to silence those who advocate fundamental freedoms in Hong Kong,” and he urged authorities to grant Lai humanitarian parole.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing last month, also said he had raised the issue of Lai, who is a British citizen.
British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said Monday that Lai’s prison term was “tantamount to a life sentence.”
“I remain deeply concerned for Mr. Lai’s health, and I again call on the Hong Kong authorities to end his appalling ordeal and release him on humanitarian grounds, so that he may be reunited with his family,” she said in a statement.
Hong Kong officials have defended the independence of the local judicial system, which is separate from mainland China’s, and accused foreign governments of interfering in internal affairs. Chief Justice Andrew Cheung, Hong Kong’s top judge, said in a speech last month that calls for Lai’s premature release “strike at the very heart of the rule of law itself.”
Lai was convicted on one charge of conspiring to publish seditious articles under colonial-era legislation. He was also convicted on two charges of colluding with foreign forces under the national security law, with the three government-vetted judges describing Lai as the “mastermind” of a conspiracy to lobby foreign governments to impose sanctions, blockades or other hostile measures against China and Hong Kong.
In their 855-page verdict, the judges cited Lai’s interactions with senior U.S. government officials, including meetings he had at the height of the 2019 protests with Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, national security adviser John Bolton and multiple members of Congress.
Lai, who has the right to appeal, had already been convicted separately on a number of lesser charges, including fraud and unlawful assembly. In December 2022, he was sentenced to five years and nine months in prison in the fraud case.
The national security law and related local legislation have transformed life in Hong Kong, an international financial hub that was promised its civil liberties would be preserved for 50 years after the 1997 handover. Most of the city’s pro-democracy figures have been imprisoned, left politics or moved abroad.
Last year, Hong Kong ranked 140th out of 180 countries and territories in Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index, down from 18th in 2002.
