Jimmy Lai’s son accuses UK of ‘weakness’ on his father’s detention in Hong Kong

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1. The son of Jimmy Lai has accused Sir Keir Starmer’s UK government of showing “weakness” towards China in the face of the continued detention of the former Hong Kong media tycoon and British citizen.

   Sebastien Lai told the Financial Times that the health of his 77-year-old father, who was first arrested in Hong Kong in 2020, was rapidly deteriorating and called on Starmer to meet his family ahead of the G7 summit this month.

   “It is urgent. I honestly don’t know how much longer my father has,” Lai said, urging the British government to do more to secure his release.

   “If they can’t get my father out, if they can’t make it known that they stand behind what he has stood for, then it’s a real show of weakness,” he said.

   “We are requesting to meet with the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer,” he added. Lai wants Starmer to raise his father’s ongoing captivity with other western leaders at the upcoming G7 summit in Canada to help build pressure on China, as well as ensuring the UK keeps pushing Beijing itself.

   Jimmy Lai, one of Hong Kong’s most prominent democracy champions who ran the Apple Daily newspaper, was arrested by authorities after protests in 2019 against Beijing’s increasing control of the former British colony.

   Hong Kong has its own government and a separate legal system from that of the mainland. But Beijing has tightened its grip on the city and imposed national security legislation that gave authorities sweeping powers to target broadly defined crimes of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign powers.

   China has painted Lai, who was arrested under the controversial national security law, as the instigator of pro-democracy protests. He has been charged in Hong Kong with “conspiracy to collude with foreign forces” and with publishing “seditious” materials. L

   Lai’s family has said he was a newspaper publisher who believed in democracy, and that as a Hongkonger and British citizen the UK government should support them in fighting for his release.

   They say Lai has been subject to “inhumane” treatment by being held in solitary confinement and that he has not been given access to specialist doctors for his diabetes.

2. The UK government made that call long before 97, what is the fate of one oligarch to the lose of an entire colony. 

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