By CatholicVote | Created at 2024-12-05 17:46:20 | Updated at 2024-12-26 01:15:43
2 weeks ago
CV NEWS FEED // In a Dec. 4 article, The Free Press highlighted the heroism of Hong Kong billionaire Jimmy Lai, a Catholic covert who was imprisoned for his newspaper’s condemnation of the Beijing government.
The Free Press states that Lai founded the newspaper Apple Daily in 1995 and described it as “the popular Chinese-language newspaper that railed against the authoritarianism of Beijing.”
Lai was arrested in 2020, and Apple Daily’s bank assets were frozen in 2021.
The Free Press pointed to a new book published this week about Lai, titled “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic,” by Mark L. Clifford.
Soviet Gulag survivor Natan Sharansky wrote a foreword to the book and shared a conversation he had with Lai in 2020, when Lai knew he was going to be arrested soon. Sharansky asked the billionaire, who is a citizen of the United Kingdom, why he wouldn’t try to escape.
“I can’t do it. I called my people to fight,” Lai answered. “They look at me. I can’t let them down.”
As CatholicVote recently reported, Lai testified in court last month. Catholic Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, archbishop emeritus of Hong Kong, attended the trial, along with Lai’s wife Teresa and daughter Claire Lai Choi.
According to Reuters, Lai had previously “pleaded not guilty to two charges of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and a charge of conspiracy to publish seditious material.”
Lai stated that his actions at the Apple Daily were not political, and that he was just reporting the facts for Hong Kong citizens.
Lai had expressed concern about the country’s national security law before it was implemented in 2020, and during his trial, he stated, “Under the national security law, there is no way for us to run an independent media. Also, subsequent events proved that I was right.”
