WASHINGTON – U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday he feels “so badly” about the conviction of pro-democracy Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai and had asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to consider releasing him.
“I spoke to President Xi about it, and I asked (Xi) to consider his release. He’s not well. He’s an older man, and he’s not well,” Trump said of the 78-year-old founder of the now-shuttered Apple Daily, while answering various questions from reporters in the Oval Office.
“So, I did put that request out. We’ll see what happens,” Trump added, without saying when he made the call.
A Hong Kong court on Monday found Lai guilty of colluding with foreign forces and publishing seditious material, under a Beijing-decreed national security law, with a sentence of life in prison possible despite his deteriorating health.
Hong Kong authorities in the early hours of Tuesday expressed “strong dissatisfaction with and opposition” to the press and politicians in the United States and other Western countries for their “malicious attacks, false statements and smears.”
“These biased statements and malicious smears from external forces precisely reflect that the national security risks we face are real,” the city government said. “The court has made its decision on the case strictly in accordance with the law and evidence, free from any interference and absolutely free of any political considerations.”
Trump, who met with Xi in late October in South Korea, and senior U.S. officials have mostly dealt with China from an economic standpoint, avoiding statements about politically sensitive issues, such as civil rights and Taiwan.
But they chose to address Lai’s conviction, with a later statement by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio urging China to free him from prison.
“The guilty verdict in Mr. Lai’s national security case reflects the enforcement of Beijing’s laws to silence those who seek to protect freedom of speech and other fundamental rights,” Rubio said.
“Reports indicate that Mr. Lai’s health has severely deteriorated during more than 1,800 days in prison. We urge the authorities to bring this ordeal to an end as soon as possible and to release Mr. Lai on humanitarian grounds,” he said.
The trial was closely watched by other countries as the most important test of judicial independence and media freedom in the former British colony since its handover to China in 1997.
Lai, a British citizen, will be sentenced on a later date, with the high court set to hear mitigation arguments beginning Jan. 12.
An outspoken critic of China’s ruling Communist Party, Lai pleaded not guilty to all the charges.
He was arrested in 2020 under Hong Kong’s national security law, imposed by Beijing in June that year to quell anti-government protests that continued for months in the semiautonomous Chinese region.
BY: The Times Union
