UK – The Times, Sept. 12, 2026
Claire Lai recounts how she broke the news to the jailed democracy campaigner and says his release is more urgent than ever
Jimmy Lai has spent six years in a Chinese prison simply for fighting for democracy and a free press in Hong Kong, where he spent most of his adult life. For more than 2,080 days, the British citizen has been held in solitary confinement. His nails have fallen off, his teeth are rotting and he has been denied medicine for his diabetes.
Through all of that, his family say the pro-democracy campaigner has shown remarkably deep reserves of fortitude. That was until two months ago, when he first learned the terrible news no parent ever wants to hear. His daughter, Claire Lai, has cancer.
Claire, 30, has been one of her father’s most vocal advocates, travelling around the world to demand that prime ministers and presidents intercede for Jimmy, 78, with Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party.
Speaking for the first time about her diagnosis, she described how one of China’s most famous political prisoners, whose media company ran Next Magazine and Apple Daily, one of Hong Kong’s most widely read newspapers, broke down in tears when he heard the news.
“My father, in his six years of imprisonment, he has taken everything in his stride,” she said on Wednesday, a day before she started chemotherapy.
“Even when he was ill, when he had heart problems and back problems and was too weak to stand. But that was the one time he really broke down crying.”
