Hong Kong police are reportedly deploying 1,000 officers around the clock to guard the courtroom where the trial of Jimmy Lai began on Monday, three years after his arrest. Like the decision to hold the British citizen in solitary confinement in a maximum-security prison, this is theatre. Mr Lai, a media mogul and pro-democracy activist, is 76. His allies in the 2019 movement to uphold Hong Kong’s freedoms are themselves in jail or have fled abroad. Political opposition has been ruthlessly suppressed following the protests.
Mr Lai is charged with conspiring to collude with foreign forces under 2020’s draconian National Security Law (NSL) – he is accused of calling for sanctions against Chinese and Hong Kong officials – and with producing and distributing “seditious publications”. Beijing had long loathed his Apple Daily newspaper for its outspoken criticism; it closed in 2021. He is already serving a sentence for fraud, a charge that his supporters say was politically motivated. This new trial is nakedly political. There is little doubt how it will end. The NSL is extraordinarily broad in scope, even claiming jurisdiction over activities abroad by people who are not Hong Kong residents.
