Hong Kong Police Charge Media Mogul Jimmy Lai With Foreign Collusion

The police didn’t give even more details, but a story in Mr. Lai’s newspaper, Apple Everyday, said the charge was “reportedly centered on Lai’s acceptance of interviews and phone calls for sanctions from foreign governments.”

Enforcement steps versus pro-democracy figures have been accelerating in Hong Kong. In latest weeks, authorities expelled opposition lawmakers from the legislature and jailed prominent activists such as

Joshua Wong

on crimes linked to the mass protests that rocked Hong Kong final yr.

On Monday, Hong Kong police arrested eight men linked to a peaceful protest at a university this yr, three of them on suspicion of nationwide safety crimes. On Tuesday, police arrested 7 pro-democracy activists, such as a previous lawmaker, linked to participation in a protest on July one, the day right after the nationwide safety law was imposed.

Mr. Lai, a well-recognized determine in Hong Kong, is an entrepreneur who developed a productive clothing model right after starting off out as a youngster laborer in the city’s factories. He was spurred to pro-democracy activism by the 1989 Tiananmen Sq. massacre and at some point started brash publications these kinds of as Apple Everyday that overtly criticized China’s Communist Social gathering and pro-Beijing figures in Hong Kong.

Mr. Lai was arrested in August alongside with nine other individuals in a daylong sweep. Arrested at his dwelling, he was knowledgeable he was beneath suspicion of breaching the new nationwide safety law and later on paraded as a result of the Apple Everyday newsroom. Mr. Lai was introduced on bail but was jailed this month when a courtroom denied him bail on a individual fraud charge.

China imposed the nationwide safety law just ahead of midnight on June 30 to stamp out final year’s wave of pro-democracy demonstrations. Hrs previously, Mr. Lai predicted in an job interview with The Wall Avenue Journal that it would mark the loss of life knell for the “one state, two systems” arrangement that had permitted Hong Kong to largely govern itself considering the fact that the then-British colony was returned to China in 1997.

The law enables China’s solution police to function in Hong Kong and gives mainland authorities wide latitude to enforce crimes these kinds of as foreign collusion, secession and sedition. The new powers include things like the potential to eliminate situations from local courts and prosecute them in mainland China’s opaque legal system.

Final yr, Mr. Lai was element of a comprehensive-courtroom press of Hong Kong pro-democracy figures encouraging the U.S. to move legal guidelines imposing sanctions if Beijing eroded Hong Kong’s semiautonomous status. Mr. Lai’s conferences with Vice President

Mike Pence

and other top U.S. officials outraged Beijing. The safety law explicitly manufactured seeking sanctions from foreign governments a crime.

Following the law was launched and even while out on bail, Mr. Lai continued to talk out about what he observed as threats versus Hong Kong’s way of lifetime, rooted in Western-fashion rule of law, vowing not to be intimidated. It incorporated giving a common video job interview that was livestreamed on Twitter.

Mr. Lai will appear in courtroom Saturday.

Compose to John Lyons at [email protected]