Following the Guilty Verdicts in the NSL Case Against Jimmy Lai

Statement by Samuel Chu, President of The Campaign for Hong Kong

Earlier today, Hong Kong’s High Court found Apple Daily founder and Publisher Jimmy Lai guilty on two counts of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and one count of conspiracy to publish seditious publications. The convictions, delivered after a 156-day jury-less trial, mark one of the most severe uses of the National Security Law to date against a publisher and political prisoner of conscience.

I have known Jimmy Lai not as a symbol, but as a man—an editor, a believer, and someone who refused to accept that power should decide what may be said, printed, or believed. From that vantage point, today’s verdicts are not surprising. But they are still devastating.

The judgment exposes the core injustice at the heart of this case. The court itself describes the prosecution as centered “mainly on one man.” Although it claims that conduct predating the National Security Law is merely “background,” that background does the real work. When a person’s beliefs, associations, and past speech become the evidence through which guilt is inferred, the law is no longer judging acts. It is judging a life.

This was a 156-day national security trial without a jury, under a legal architecture fundamentally remade to ensure conviction. For anyone who has engaged Hong Kong’s legal system in good faith—as lawyers, advocates, or observers—this represents a decisive rupture with the city’s common-law tradition.

Jimmy Lai is 78 years old. He has been in continuous custody since early December 2020—approximately 1,838 days as of today—much of it under harsh, restrictive conditions. He has endured prolonged periods of solitary confinement. His health has visibly deteriorated. This is not justice. It is punishment by attrition.

The implications go far beyond Jimmy Lai. This verdict is a warning shot to journalists, publishers, lawyers, and civil society everywhere in Hong Kong: words can be retroactively criminalized; international engagement can be recast as subversion; a lifetime of lawful conduct can be rewritten as conspiracy. This is how repression is institutionalized—quietly, procedurally, through court judgments.

When “background” becomes the crime, no one is safe.

When publishing becomes sedition, anyone can be made a criminal.

The Campaign for Hong Kong calls on the international community—governments, parliaments, and multilateral institutions—to respond with clarity and consequence. Statements of concern are no longer enough.

We call for immediate, sustained, high-level diplomatic engagement demanding Jimmy Lai’s humanitarian release, with public timelines and accountability. We urge targeted sanctions and visa restrictions against officials responsible for this prosecution, the denial of bail, and years of prolonged, degrading detention. We call for coordinated action under the Global Magnitsky and equivalent human-rights sanctions regimes in the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and allied democracies. We urge formal action at the United Nations, including urgent communications by Special Rapporteurs and sustained scrutiny at the Human Rights Council. And we call for relentless international visibility—keeping this case on legislative and diplomatic agendas until Jimmy Lai is free.

Silence now will be read as permission.

Finally, I want to speak directly.

To Jimmy: You are not alone. The attempt to erase your voice has only sharpened it. Your courage has outlasted the machinery built to silence you.

To your family—Teresa, Sebastien, Claire, and all of Jimmy’s loved ones—no verdict can justify what has been taken from you: years of presence, ordinary moments, and peace of mind. Many of us stand with you in grief, anger, and unyielding resolve in this devastating moment.

The Campaign for Hong Kong again demands Jimmy Lai’s immediate release on humanitarian grounds. Continuing to imprison an elderly, ailing man after years of effective pre-trial punishment serves no public interest. It serves only fear.

History will not remember today’s verdicts as neutral acts of law. It will remember them as a choice, as a warning, and as a grave miscarriage of justice.

###