The professional membership of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand is dismayed by the 20-year prison sentence recently handed down by the Hong Kong High Court to Jimmy Lai, a Hong Kong and British citizen who founded the now-defunct Apple Daily newspaper.
Lai is 78 and in declining health. If the sentence is not commuted, he will more than likely die in prison for the opinions he holds on democracy and free expression -- not for any criminal or seditious activities.
Lai's manifest persecution underlines the deterioration of freedoms in Hong Kong since the National Security Law's promulgation on 1 July 2020, and the erosion of the one-country, two-systems undertakings made by Beijing at the handover of the territory by the United Kingdom in 1997.
Since it is unlikely that anyone in Hong Kong will be able to speak on Lai's behalf, we respectfully urge the Chinese authorities to release him -- as a matter of simple decency if nothing else.
12 February 2026
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