[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 209 (Friday, December 3, 2021)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1311]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]





                           HONORING JIMMY LAI

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. JAMES P. McGOVERN

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                        Friday, December 3, 2021

  Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, on December 3, 2020, one year ago, Jimmy 
Chee-ying Lai, founder of the now shuttered Hong Kong pro-democracy 
newspaper the Apple Daily, was denied bail for the first time. He has 
since been convicted and sentenced and will spend his 74th birthday on 
December 8 behind bars.
  Jimmy Lai's life epitomizes the rise and fall of Hong Kong's 
freedoms.
  Mr. Lai was born in Guangzhou, Guangdong, in China in 1947. At the 
age of 12, he entered Hong Kong as a stowaway on a fishing boat. He 
found work at a garment factory and rose from an odd-job laborer to a 
manager. In 1975, he bought a bankrupt garment factory and built riches 
with an Asia-wide clothing chain, Giordano. In interview after 
interview, Jimmy recalled, ``I came here with one dollar, the freedom 
here has given me the opportunity to build myself up.''
  The Tiananmen protests of 1989 in China motivated Jimmy to turn his 
attention from economic opportunities to civil and political freedom. 
``You deliver information, then you deliver choice, and choice is 
freedom,'' he recounted. In 1990, he began publishing Next Magazine 
with a formula of tabloid-style sensationalism combined with 
investigative exposes of political and business elites.
  In 1995, just two years before Hong Kong's return to China, Jimmy 
founded the Apple Daily with the catchy slogan ``An apple a day keeps 
the liars away.'' Against charges that the newspaper was anti-Chinese 
Communist Party, he retorted that ``if we run this newspaper based on 
hatred of communism, we will fail.'' Instead, ``all we need is to love 
what we love most, which is freedom of speech and freedom of the 
press.''
  This love of freedom is, however, anathema to the Chinese 
government's goals. When Hong Kongers protested against national 
security legislation on July 1, 2003, Jimmy's publications urged 
readers to take to the streets and called for the then Chief Executive 
Tung Chee-hwa to resign.
  During the 2014 Umbrella Movement, the Apple Daily was again at the 
forefront of the call for ``genuine universal suffrage.'' Jimmy camped 
out at the occupy site in Admiralty near the Central Government 
Offices. When the police cleared the site on December 13, 2014, he was 
among those arrested.
  During the pro-democracy protests in 2019, the Apple Daily offered 
blanket coverage of the months-long protests and published hard-hitting 
reports on police abuses and alleged police-gangster collusion. Jimmy 
joined various mass demonstrations that numbered up to two million.
  In early 2020 Jimmy was repeatedly arrested among other veterans of 
the city's pro-democracy movement for organizing and participating in 
marches on August 18, August 31, and October 1, 2019. Such protests 
were rendered ``unauthorized'' simply because the police routinely 
refused to issue ``Notices of No Objection'' beginning in August. Jimmy 
was convicted and sentenced to a total of 20 months in prison. He faces 
more jail terms for attending an unauthorized candlelight vigil on June 
4, 2020.
  On June 30, 2020, the National People's Congress Standing Committee 
enacted the National Security Law to criminalize vaguely defined 
``subversion,'' ``secession,'' ``terrorism'' and ``collusion with 
foreign forces.'' The law removes the presumption of bail and imposes a 
maximum penalty of life imprisonment, thereby stifling free expression 
and other fundamental freedoms in contravention of Hong Kong's Basic 
Law. Authorities quickly came for their targets. On August 10, police 
arrested Jimmy, his two sons and three top Apple Daily executives for 
collusion with external elements and conspiracy to defraud (for 
violating the terms of a commercial lease). More than 200 police 
officers also raided the newspaper's headquarters and seized box-loads 
of documents. On December 3, a court denied Jimmy's bail application 
and remanded him to custody. He was briefly granted bail in de facto 
house arrest on December 23 but was remanded to custody on December 31 
when the court ruled in favor of the Department of Justice's appeal. On 
February 16, 2021, Jimmy was arrested under the national security law 
and ``perverting the course of justice'' for aiding activist Andy Li in 
his failed attempt to flee to Taiwan.
  Locking up Jimmy Lai did not silence the Apple Daily. After the 
arrest and raid on August 10, 2020, the newspaper published on its 
front page a photo of Jimmy in handcuffs with the headline ``Apple 
Daily must fight on.'' In his last media interview with the BBC in 
December 2020, he remarked that ``If they can induce fear in you, 
that's the cheapest way to control you and the most effective way and 
they know it. The only way to defeat the way of intimidation is to face 
up to fear and don't let it frighten you.'' Journalists at the Apple 
Daily heroically kept up the fight in subsequent months. In the end, 
the authorities could strangle the newspaper only by freezing its 
company accounts in June 2021.
  Jimmy said that ``Hong Kong . . . made me what I am today'' and thus 
he chose to stay in Hong Kong despite the severe consequences. In 
truth, Jimmy also made Hong Kong what it was yesterday, by defending 
freedoms for as long as he could.
  Jimmy's fearlessness has been honored with the Gwen Ifill Press 
Freedom Award by the Committee to Protect Journalists in 2021, the 
Freedom of Press Award by Reporters Without Borders and the Faith and 
Freedom Award by the Acton Institute in 2020.
  Madam Speaker, as cochair of the Congressional-Executive Commission 
on China I will continue to advocate for the freedoms and human rights 
of the people of Hong Kong, including Jimmy Lai.

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