Jimmy Lai’s “co-conspirators” speak out after being named in Hong Kong trial

04 Jan 24 | Asia and Pacific, Hong Kong, News and features

The desperation with which the Hong Kong authorities and, by extension, the Chinese Communist Party are trying to stifle criticism has reached new levels this week, with fresh developments in the trial of publisher Jimmy Lai.

The 76-year-old Hong Kong-British businessman and publisher has been detained since December 2020. His assets were frozen in May 2021 and his publication Apple Daily was forced to close in June the same year. He has been in prison ever since.

On 18 December 2023, Lai’s long-delayed trial on charges of sedition and collusion with foreign forces began. Lai pleaded not guilty.

Earlier this week, the prosecution presented a list of people they termed as Lai’s co-conspirators.

Among Lai’s alleged co-conspirators are Bill Browder, founder of the Global Magnitsky Justice Campaign and Benedict Rogers, founder of Hong Kong Watch, along with James Cunningham, former US consul general in Hong Kong and chairman of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation and Luke de Pulford, executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC).

Browder and Rogers have dismissed the allegations against them.

Browder told Index this week, “I have never met or spoken to Jimmy Lai and for them to accuse me of being a co-conspirator with him or him with me is a total fabrication. It is just an indication of how illegitimate and trumped up the changes are against Jimmy Lai.”

Browder said that the charges are an indication of how China is “trying to take its authoritarian oppression international by going after people like me who have not set foot in China for 35 years”.

Benedict Rogers told Index that Lai is being punished for “daring to publish stories and opinions which Beijing dislikes; the crime of conspiracy to talk about politics to politicians; and conspiracy to raise human rights concerns with human rights organisations”.

He said, “Jimmy Lai is, as the head of his international legal team Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC puts it so brilliantly, charged with the crime of conspiracy to commit journalism.”

Rogers said his supposed conspiracy with Lai is nothing more than journalism.

“Citing a message from Mr Lai to me, requesting me to ask whether the last governor of Hong Kong Lord Patten would provide a comment to journalists from his newspaper, as evidence of a crime signals that the normal, legitimate, day-to-day work of journalists in Hong Kong is no longer possible. Journalism is not a crime, but in Hong Kong it now is,” he said.

Despite the flimsy nature of the charges against the alleged co-conspirators, Browder said his naming along with others in the court case is “a very real threat”.

“The Hong Kong authorities have come up with the national security law and are saying that Jimmy Lai has conspired with others to violate that law and there are criminal punishments. I can imagine a scenario in which the authorities decide to issue Interpol Red Notices against me, Benedict Rogers, Luke de Pulford and others and request assistance. This is what dictators and authoritarian governments do,” he said.

Browder is no stranger to being singled out by authoritarian regimes abusing the Interpol system.

Browder, through his Hermitage Capital Management fund, was once the largest foreign investor in Russia. In 2005, Browder was denied entry to the country and labelled as a threat to national security for exposing corruption in Russia.

Three years later, Browder’s lawyer Sergei Magnitsky uncovered a $230 million fraud involving government officials and was arrested, thrown in jail without trial and kept in horrendous conditions. A year later, Magnitsky died.

Browder has since led the Global Magnitsky Justice Campaign which seeks to impose targeted visa bans and asset freezes on human rights abusers and highly corrupt officials.

In the time since, Russia has called on Interpol eight times to issue red notices against Browder.

“Interpol has for a long time been the long arm of dictators to pursue their critics and opposition politicians. I have been a poster child of that in relation to Russia. We know that China and other countries, such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, regularly abuse Interpol and Interpol doesn’t seem to have the controls and mechanisms in place for weeding out these illegitimate red notices,” he said.

As a result of Russia’s use of Interpol’s red notices, Browder said that it has closed off 95% of the world for him and that little will change if Hong Kong goes down the same route.

“It won’t change anything for me but will change things for all other people who have been named,” he said.

Browder said the case against Lai is abusive and he should be released immediately, adding: “This needs a robust response from the British Government. You can’t have a bunch of British citizens being threatened for nothing other than expressing their political opinions.”

Before Christmas, the recently appointed foreign secretary and former prime minister David Cameron called on Hong Kong to release Lai. Cameron said in a statement, “Hong Kong’s national security law is a clear breach of the Sino-British joint declaration. Its continued existence and use is a demonstration of China breaking its international commitments.”

Asked whether the new foreign secretary, who has a record of striving for a closer relationship with China from his previous time in office, would be the person to provide that robust response, Browder said: “I think we are living in a different world vis a vis China and I am confident he will do the right thing here.”

2023 Freedom of Expression Award winners announced

20 Oct 23 | Afghanistan, Fellowship 2023, India, Iran, News and features, Newsletters

An Iranian rapper, an Indian fact-checker and an Afghan with a motorbike classroom. One thing that connects these three is the time they’ve spent, or are still spending, behind bars. The other is that they all took home Freedom of Expression Awards last night. We’d like to spend this article introducing you to these champions of free expression, as well as honouring our Trustee Award winner, who needs no introduction. Who else could it be but Sir Salman Rushdie?

Every year when we gather in London to celebrate these annual awards and the relative safety we feel is in stark contrast to the positions our awards nominees find themselves in. This year was no different.

Toomaj Salehi, a well-known hip-hop artist from Iran, took home the 2023 Arts Award. Even if we’d wanted to bring Salehi to London to receive his award, it would have been impossible. Right now, as you read this, he is in jail for “corruption on earth”, and he’ll stay there for a further five-and-a-half years. Salehi sings about injustice and abuses by the Iranian authorities — even earlier arrests didn’t stop him from standing up to atrocities through his music. After supporting protests after the death of Jina “Mahsa” Amini, Salehi was once again arrested, this time violently, and it’s believed he was tortured into a false confession. Although he is still locked away, his music is not silenced, and you can listen to it here.

Our Campaigning Award winner comes from Afghanistan, the brilliant Matiullah Wesa. Through his organisation Pen Path, Wesa has been protecting education in the country, even more so after the Taliban takeover. Since 2009, he has re-opened over 100 schools closed by the Taliban in remote villages, as well as establishing new ones. He’s given pens and books to hundreds of thousands of children, and set up libraries in rural areas. And he’s set out on a motorbike, using it as a mobile classroom, complete with a computer screen, speakers and bookcase. But in March this year, he was detained by the Taliban and had his house raided. Seven months later there’s no sign of release. His family has not been allowed to visit him.

This year’s Journalism Award winner is Mohammed Zubair. He co-founded the fact-checking platform Alt News, set up to dismantle propaganda networks and debunk fake news. After setting its sights on political fact-checking and amplifying dissidents, the outlet came under pressure from the outside. And it wasn’t long before Zubair himself became a target. He was arrested in June 2022 for a tweet, and bailed. But every time he was released on bail, he was arrested again for something else — a cycle which lasted for almost a month. No doubt a very long time when you’re in and out of prison.

It’s not often that we mention Colin Firth in Index, but today we have good reason. He joined our chair Trevor Phillips on stage last night to present the Trustees Award, which was given to a bastion of free expression, novelist Sir Salman Rushdie. It won’t be news to Index readers that Rushdie has faced appalling threats to his life since publishing The Satanic Verses, the most serious of which was an attempted murder in New York last summer, leaving him blind in one eye. This week, Rushdie announced an upcoming release of a memoir about the attack. Understandably, Rushdie did not attend our event, but he did leave us with a video message. To round up our newsletter this week, we’d like to leave you with a few of his words:

“My connection with Index goes back really a long way…something like 40 years on and off that we have done things together. You know, I can’t avoid saying that the work is more important than ever because it seems like the urge to censor is stronger than ever and doesn’t come only from one direction. It comes from every possible direction, from the young and the old, the left and the right, and needs to be resisted as strongly as ever.”