The Jimmy Lai verdict is a grave and troubling injustice

Jimmy Lai, together with his friends in Hong Kong, ranks alongside the world’s greatest dissidents and champions of freedom. Lai along with Martin Lee, the father of Hong Kong’s democracy movement, lawyers Margaret Ng and Albert Ho, trade unionist Lee Cheuk-yan, social activist Leung Kwok-hung, and pro-democracy politician Cyd Ho and others have been key figures in Hong Kong’s fight for freedom.

- BENEDICT ROGERS

In time, history will list them in the same breath as Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr, Vaclav Havel, Lech Walesa, Andrei Sakharov, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Natan Sharansky, or Mahatma Gandhi, both in terms of their inspiring courage and commitment – and in terms of the absurd injustice with which they have been afflicted.

The decision by Hong Kong’s Court of Appeal to reject an appeal by these seven courageous Hong Kong pro-democracy leaders against a conviction for taking part in a peaceful protest in 2019 is – as the last British governor of Hong Kong Lord Chris Patten rightly said – “unjust”.

It was a protest in which 1.7 million Hong Kongers – about a quarter of the city’s population – participated in a series of peaceful demonstrations that swept Hong Kong in 2019 against a proposed law that would allow for extradition from Hong Kong into mainland China. This was in total breach of Hong Kong’s promised autonomy and freedom.

That a British judge, Lord David Neuberger, one of the few remaining retired foreign judges still sitting in Hong Kong’s courts, sat on the panel that upheld the conviction brings shame to Lord Neuberger and Britain. It gives the lie to the idea that foreign judges can exercise some restraining influence by continuing to sit in Hong Kong’s courts.

Even more shocking is that Lord Neuberger, in the written judgment, said the chief justices had “fully and impressively” considered questions regarding whether the conviction was proportionate to the defendants’ fundamental human rights, enshrined in Hong Kong’s bill of rights – including freedom of expression and freedom of assembly.