(Population Research Institute) — The Chinese Communist Party’s show trial of Jimmy Lai has reached its predictable conclusion. The three Communist stooges sitting in judgment — Communists do not trust juries — found the Catholic human rights champion “guilty” of the trumped-up charges that had been brought against him.
The Hong Kong businessman and journalist had been accused of conspiring to endanger national security and publish seditious articles, crimes that carry a penalty of life imprisonment.
But his real crime was demanding, in articles published in his newspaper, the Apple Daily, that the CCP honor its 1997 agreement with Great Britain. At the time, China’s Communist rulers had pledged to preserve the freedoms that the former colony had long enjoyed under its enlightened British rulers.
Of course, they didn’t. And when they began violating the basic freedoms of the Hong Kong people, Lai called them out in article after article.
For this, the 78-year-old Lai was arrested in 2021. He has spent the last four years in solitary confinement in a maximum-security prison as his trial slowly dragged on.
Attempting to justify their “guilty” verdict, the three stooges were unrelenting in their criticism of Lai. He had conspired to with foreigners to “destabilize” the ruling party, they falsely claimed.
Judge Esther Toh went even farther, claiming that Jimmy Lai, who was born in China, hated the country of his birth. “There is no doubt,” she said of Lai, that he “had harbored his resentment and hatred of China for many of his adult years.”
The Communist Party and its minions like Esther Toh like to pretend that they and only they represent China and its people, and that any resistance to their tyranny is “anti-China” and “anti-Chinese.”
But Lai didn’t hate China. He hated the tyranny that held China and its people in its grip. He had fled famine in China in 1961 and prospered mightily in freewheeling Hong Kong over the next few decades. And with Mao’s death and Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms, he became hopeful that his homeland would one day be free as well.
His political awakening came on June 4, 1989, when the Beijing regime gunned down thousands of students and workers in and around the main square of China’s capital city.
After the Tiananmen Massacre, Lai started writing articles criticizing the barbarism, corruption, and decay of the Chinese Communist Party and its leaders. In retaliation, the Party began a campaign to destroy Lai’s businesses.
And Jimmy Lai courageously fought back. He used his money, his influence, and the power of his presses to support Hong Kong’s democracy movement.
In years leading up to the 1997 handover of Hong Kong back to China, hundreds of thousands of Hong Kongers left for safer shores, but Lai stayed. He had fled communism once before; now he would stand and fight. As he often said, “I will fight for freedom. I will not stop fighting communism. I will never give up my dignity as a human being.”
Where did the courage to confront the biggest killing machine on the planet — the Chinese Communist Party — come from? Lai was inspired by the Catholics who led the Hong Kong democracy movement, chief among them the former Cardinal Archbishop of Hong Kong, Cardinal Joseph Zen.
Lai entered the church within days of the Communist takeover, baptized by Cardinal Joseph Zen himself. As Lai’s wife, herself a devout Catholic, said at the time, “Jimmy knows that a fight is coming and that he will need God’s help for this fight.”
In the years following, Jimmy Lai was beaten up, had his house firebombed, and was repeatedly arrested. Yet he never stopped fighting.
That fight is now entering its final stage. Lai, who is diabetic and in poor health, will undoubtedly be sentenced to life imprisonment.
And who will speak out on behalf of the great Catholic man who is China’s most important political prisoner?
Not the British government, which has been largely silent, even though Lai’s persecution at the hands of a totalitarian regime violates the Sino-British Agreement over the future of Hong Kong.
Not the Vatican itself which, under Pope Francis, remained silent over the long years of the Catholic human rights champion’s imprisonment. It is a silence that mirrors the Vatican’s lack of response to the suffering of Catholics in China.
I suspect that some in the Vatican are concerned that speaking out against the unjust treatment of Jimmy Lai will jeopardize the Sino-Vatican Agreement.
If so, they are mistaken. The Sino-Vatican Agreement, which effectively cedes to the CCP the authority to name bishops, has been a disaster. The Communist Party is using it to not only appoint their favored prelates but also as cover to strangle the Church in China with suffocating controls.
I was heartened to see that in October, Pope Leo XIV personally greeted Lai’s wife and daughter after the general audience in St. Peter’s Square. I pray that the new Pope speaks out strongly against the unjust treatment of not only our fellow Catholic, Jimmy Lai, but of all Christians in China.
And say a prayer for Jimmy Lai, that the Holy Spirit may console him in his cruel captivity. He will be sentenced on January 12, probably to life imprisonment.
To date, his faith has remained strong. As he told the three Communist stooges, “(A)t the end of the day, the truth will come out in the kingdom of heaven, in the kingdom of God, and that’s good enough for me.”
Steven W. Mosher is the president of the Population Research Institute.
