Jailed media tycoon Jimmy Lai has testified that he thought the Hong Kong police had begun to “twist the facts” in making arrests after a Beijing-imposed security law came into effect in 2020.
The court heard that the tycoon said during a livestreamed interview called “Live Chat with Jimmy Lai” on August 27, 2020, that Lam’s arrest showed the Beijing-imposed national security law (NSL) “definitely had destroyed our rule of law.”
Lam was found guilty of rioting last week, with a judge saying the ex-lawmaker was trying to make political gains from being in Yuen Long during the mob attack, when a group of white-clad men stormed the MTR station and attacked passengers and passers-by.
The three judges overseeing Lai’s high-profile trial – which entered its 111th day on Tuesday – pressed the tycoon to explain his comment, noting that Lam was charged with rioting, which is not a national security offence.
Lam Cheuk-ting. File Photo: LegCo.
“I think the NSL has, you know, affected the way… the government conducted the law,” the Apple Daily founder said. “After the NSL the government has been very strict in using the law.”
Lai argued that Lam was “defending the people” rather than rioting, and that the prosecution against him was a “twisting of facts.”
“After the NSL the government will twist the facts, is that what you are saying?” judge Susana D’Almada Remedios asked.
“At least the police, yes,” Lai said, denying that he intended to incite hatred against authorities through his comments.
The tycoon has pleaded not guilty to two counts of conspiring to collude with foreign forces under Beijing’s security law and one count of conspiring to publish “seditious” materials under a colonial-era law. He could be jailed for life if convicted.
‘Never an intention’
Lai was also asked to explain comments made in another livestreamed interview aired on August 18, 2020, in which he said the assimilation of China into the “world’s value system” would be internationally beneficial.
In that interview, which also featured US academic Perry Link, Lai said China’s influence had become “so big” that future clashes between the country and the West could threaten global peace.
“If we can’t change China, China… is going to change us,” he said in the interview.
Lai told the court that there was “never an intention” of inciting hatred against Beijing and maintained that he was commenting on “facts which were already happening” at that time.
Judge Esther Toh appeared unconvinced as she said an assimilation suggested a “give and take situation,” whereas Lai’s comment indicated unilaterally changing China.
Lai said it had all along been his assertion that China, too, would benefit from being absorbed into the international “value system” of trade and diplomacy.
“It was a spontaneous interview and I could not go in-depth,” he said.
A Chinese flag outside the West Kowloon Law Courts Building in Hong Kong, on November 20, 2024, as people wait in the rain to enter to witness pro-democracy media mogul Jimmy Lai testify for the first time in his national security trial. Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.
Lai also told the court that the biggest damage US sanctions had caused to China was to dampen foreign investors’ sentiment, and that the country’s economy would be “dead” without overseas investment.
He said the world was not hostile to Chinese people but that it could not stand with the regime of the Chinese Communist Party, calling the latter a “dictatorship” with “authoritarian culture and values.”
The defence is expected to examine Lai’s comment on US-Taiwan ties when the trial resumes on Wednesday.
Lai has been detained since December 2020. Three judges – handpicked by Hong Kong’s chief executive to hear national security cases – are presiding over his trial in the place of a jury, marking a departure from the city’s common law traditions.
