Washington D.C. – VOA, December 17, 2024
Jailed pro-democracy publisher Jimmy Lai testified Tuesday that the Hong Kong government became “very strict” after Beijing’s national security law came into effect in 2020.
The 77-year-old British national made the statement when the court asked him to explain comments he made in August 2020 following the arrest of pro-democracy former lawmaker Lam Cheuk-ting.
At the time, Lai said the arrest showed that the Beijing-imposed national security law, or NSL, “definitely had destroyed our rule of law.” Lam was found guilty of rioting last week.
“I think the NSL has, you know, affected the way … the government conducted the law,” Lai told the court Tuesday. “After the NSL, the government has been very strict in using the law.”
The founder of the now-shuttered Apple Daily newspaper stands accused of collusion with foreign forces and sedition under Beijing’s national security law. He rejects the charges, which press freedom groups have decried as politically motivated.
“The trial is entirely a sham,” Yaqiu Wang, the China research director at the nonprofit Freedom House, told VOA.
