Briton Jimmy Lai sentenced to 20 years after national security conviction in Hong Kong | World News

Who is pro-democracy campaigner Jimmy Lai?

Lai was born in mainland China but fled to Hong Kong at the age of 12, after stowing away on a fishing boat. Here, he began working as a child labourer in a garment factory.

He went on to build a fortune with the fashion empire Giordano and, after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, when thousands of people protested for political reforms in Beijing, he became a democracy advocate and turned his hand to newspapers.

Ahead of the 1997 handover of Hong Kong from the UK to China, he started the Chinese-language newspaper Apple Daily in an attempt to maintain freedom of speech.

The paper was staunchly pro-democratic and did not shy away from criticising authorities in Beijing.

Around the same time, in 1994, he became a full British citizen. He has never held a Chinese or Hong Kong passport, but is seen as a Chinese citizen by Hong Kong authorities.

It was his pro-democratic beliefs that led to Lai becoming a key figure in the 2019 protests in Hong Kong, spurred by Beijing’s tightening squeeze on wide-ranging freedoms. Lai’s Apple Daily newspaper backed the protesters, criticising the government reforms.

Lai and his sons were arrested in August 2020 after police raided the offices of the Apple Daily publisher, Next Digital. He was granted bail, but this was overturned in December of the same year, when Lai was charged with fraud.

He was charged under the very national security laws, put in place in 2020, that he had protested.

On 15 December, he was found guilty of collusion with foreign forces, as well as conspiracy to print and distribute seditious publications.

Read more about Jimmy Lai here