Like Maria Ressa and Narges Mohammadi, Hong Kong’s Jimmy Lai, the founder of the now-defunct Apple Daily, has become an icon of human rights and civil liberties.
And like them, Lai, now 78, has paid a heavy price for holding fast to his convictions. But he has never wavered from his beliefs despite his tribulations.
On 9 February, a Hong Kong court sentenced Lai to 20 years in prison, convicting him under a sweeping national security law on charges of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and conspiracy to publish seditious publications.
Prosecutors pointed to his meetings with then US Vice-President Mike Pence and then secretary of state Mike Pompeo as evidence of foreign collusion. Lai denied wrongdoing, saying he was simply seeking international support for Hong Kong’s freedoms.
The sentencing drew a line under a years-long legal process during which he was also found guilty on separate charges including fraud and participating in unauthorised assemblies.
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Over this period, Lai was held without bail, resulting in lengthy prison terms, including time served on earlier sentences. He was handed a five-year-nine-month sentence in 2022 for fraud on unrelated charges.
Throughout these ordeals, Lai has remained calm and composed.
International support for Lai’s plight has come from across the world, including from heads of state and senior officials of other nations who have called for his release. US President Donald Trump raised the matter directly with Chinese President Xi Jinping when they met in South Korea in October 2025.
Lai’s commitment to press freedom has made him a powerful symbol of courage and resilience worldwide.
Support has surged from a wide range of groups – among them lawmakers, human rights and press freedom organisations, activists, religious leaders and civil rights advocates.
Amnesty International said in a statement: “Jimmy Lai’s sentence is a travesty of justice. He has already spent more than five years in prison for simply exercising his human rights. His case has been an attack on press freedom and freedom of expression from the very start.”
Jodie Ginsberg, the CEO of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, also spoke out. “The rule of law has been completely shattered in Hong Kong,” she said.
“Today’s egregious decision is the final nail in the coffin for freedom of the press in Hong Kong. The international community must step up its pressure to free Jimmy Lai if we want press freedom to be respected anywhere in the world.”
The Vienna-based International Press Institute strongly condemned the sentencing of their 2025 IPI World Press Freedom Hero to 20 years behind bars. “We urge the international community – and in particular the United Kingdom and United States – to use all diplomatic means to secure Lai’s release on humanitarian grounds,” it said in a statement.
Lai, a British citizen, has been in prison since 2020, despite concerns over his declining health. The court ruling is effectively a life sentence for him.
Though known for his decades of pro-democracy activism, Lai is also an outspoken Catholic whose faith has continued to sustain him during his years of incarceration. He converted to Catholicism with his wife in 1997. His son Sebastien and daughter Claire were brought up as Catholics, in what Claire described as “a very loving Catholic family”.
Claire has said that captivity “has just deepened his faith” and that he finds solace in reading the Gospel whenever his prison guards permit. He “wants to be remembered as a faithful servant of Our Lord,” she added.
In January, Claire said her father’s “physical body is breaking down” as a result of his prolonged confinement. According to her, he “reads the Gospel every morning” and spends much of his time “praying and drawing his strength from the Crucifixion and the Blessed Mother”.
She said his faith “is what protects his mind and soul”.
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