Who is Jimmy Lai, the HK media tycoon on trial for national security crimes?

Hailed by some as a hero and scorned by others as a traitor, Hong Kong’s pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai is within the closing stage of his nationwide safety trial.

Closing arguments start on Thursday for Lai, who’s accused of colluding with international forces beneath a Beijing-imposed nationwide safety regulation.

The trial has drawn worldwide consideration, with UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer calling for Lai’s launch. The 77-year-old has British in addition to Chinese language citizenship – although China doesn’t recognise twin nationality, and due to this fact considers Lai to be solely Chinese language.

Lai has been detained since December 2020 and faces a most sentence of life imprisonment if he’s convicted.

Critics say Lai’s case exhibits how Hong Kong’s authorized system has been weaponised to silence political opposition.

Lai has been a persistent thorn in China’s facet. In contrast to different tycoons who rose to the highest in Hong Kong, Mr Lai turned one of many fiercest critics of the Chinese language state and a number one determine advocating democracy within the former British territory.

“I am a born insurgent,” he informed the BBC in an interview in 2020, hours earlier than he was charged. “I’ve a really rebellious character.”

He’s probably the most outstanding particular person charged beneath the controversial national security law which China launched in 2020, in response to large protests which erupted in Hong Kong the yr earlier than.

The laws criminalises a wider vary of dissenting acts which Beijing considers subversion and secession, amongst different issues.

Beijing says the nationwide safety regulation is important to keep up stability in Hong Kong however critics say it has successfully outlawed dissent.

Through the years, Lai’s son Sebastien has known as for his launch. In February, the youthful Lai urged Starmer and US President Donald Trump to take pressing motion, including that his father’s “physique is breaking down”.

Lai was born in Guangzhou, a metropolis in southern China, to a rich household that misplaced all the things when the communists took energy in 1949.

He was 12 years previous when he fled his village in mainland China, arriving in Hong Kong as a stowaway on a fishing boat.

Whereas working odd jobs and knitting in a small clothes store he taught himself English. He went from a menial position to ultimately founding a multi-million greenback empire together with the worldwide clothes model Giordano.

The chain was an enormous success. However when China despatched in tanks to crush pro-democracy protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Sq. in 1989, Lai started a brand new journey as a vocal democracy activist in addition to an entrepreneur.

He began writing columns criticising the bloodbath that adopted the demonstrations in Beijing and established a publishing home that went on to change into considered one of Hong Kong’s most influential.

As China responded by threatening to close his shops on the mainland, main him to promote the corporate, Lai launched a string of widespread pro-democracy titles that included Subsequent, a digital journal, and the broadly learn Apple Every day newspaper.

In an area media panorama more and more afraid of Beijing, Lai had been a persistent critic of Chinese language authorities each by his publications and writing.

This has seen him change into a hero for a lot of in Hong Kong, who view him as a person of braveness who took nice dangers to defend the freedoms of the town.

However on the mainland he’s seen as a “traitor” who threatens Chinese language nationwide safety.

Lately, masked attackers firebombed Lai’s home and firm headquarters. He was additionally the goal of an assassination plot.

However not one of the threats stopped him from airing his views robustly. He was a outstanding a part of the town’s pro-democracy demonstrations and was arrested twice in 2021 on unlawful meeting expenses.

When China handed Hong Kong’s new nationwide safety regulation in June 2020, Lai informed the BBC it sounded the “demise knell” for the territory.

The influential entrepreneur additionally warned that Hong Kong would change into as corrupt as China. With out the rule of regulation, he mentioned, its coveted standing as a world monetary hub can be “completely destroyed”.

The media mogul is understood for his frankness and acts of flamboyance.

In 2021, he urged Donald Trump to assist the territory, saying he was “the one one who can save us” from China. His newspaper, Apple Every day, printed a front-page letter that completed: “Mr President, please assist us.”

For Lai, such acts have been essential to defend the town which had taken him in and fuelled his success.

He as soon as informed information company AFP: “I got here right here with nothing, the liberty of this place has given me all the things… Perhaps it is time I paid again for that freedom by preventing for it.”

Lai has been slapped with varied expenses – together with unauthorised meeting and fraud – since 2020.

He has been in custody since December of that yr.

The prosecution of Lai has captured worldwide consideration, with rights teams and international governments urging his launch.

Through the years, Sebastien Lai has travelled the world to denounce his father’s arrest and condemn Hong Kong for punishing “traits that ought to be celebrated”.

“My father is in jail for the reality on his lips, braveness in his coronary heart, and freedom in his soul,” he had mentioned.