Lawyer for activist Jimmy Lai defends free speech in landmark Hong Kong trial
Barrister Robert Pang was representing Lai in his fight against charges of colluding with foreign forces to endanger national security and conspiring with others to issue seditious publications. Lai, 77, faces up to life in prison if convicted under a national security law imposed by Beijing following anti-government protests in 2019.
The high-profile trial, which has lasted 150 days so far, entered its final stage this week, though the date for a verdict remains unclear. Foreign governments and political observers are closely monitoring the outcome, which is widely seen as a barometer of the city's judicial independence and press freedom.
As the defense began its closing arguments, Pang said it was not wrong to hope that the government would change its policies, whether through internal review or pressure, whether from inside or outside of Hong Kong.
'It's not wrong to try to persuade the government to change its policy. Nor is it wrong not to love a particular administration or even the country,' he said.
He added that the prosecution seemed to have dismissed human rights as an alien concept.
Prosecutors have deemed 161 articles published in Lai's now-defunct Apple Daily newspaper to have been seditious. Pang pushed back against that notion, using three examples to argue that they were just 'reporting,' and that the items in question were only a small fraction of what the newspaper published.
Judge Esther Toh said the three-judge panel was looking at the content of the articles, not the number, and said she wasn't playing a mathematical game. She said it is not wrong not to love the government, but it becomes wrong when someone does that through certain nefarious means.
Earlier in the day, prosecutor Anthony Chau concluded his closing statement, arguing that Lai was a mastermind of a conspiracy linked to foreign collusion, and that his testimony during the trial has not been credible.
The hearing will resume on Thursday. Despite health issues, Lai has continued to appear in court since the final arguments began on Monday.
Concerns over Lai's health delayed the trial last week after Pang reported that his client had experienced heart palpitations and the judges wanted him to receive medical treatment first. A heart monitor was delivered to Lai.
Last Friday, the Hong Kong government said a medical examination of Lai found no abnormalities and that the medical care he received in custody was adequate.
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The Guardian
40 minutes ago
- The Guardian
My dad died suddenly while I was in Japan. A memory of him lives on in my fridge
My father died suddenly and I'm still working my way through the half block of cheese that I rescued from his fridge. After a hastily organised funeral where I delivered a eulogy too long for the warm afternoon, he was cremated. My brother collected his ashes and his favourite T-shirt. But his cheese lives on. Still in its torn packet, with one of Dad's trademark purple elastic bands keeping it sealed, it has evolved into something other than food, and I refuse to imagine the meal when I finish it. My logic being that if it exists then so, somehow, does my dad. I had barely arrived in Japan when a police officer phoned to tell me that he'd died. Before ringing, officers had turned up at my flat, then at my brother's house, to break the news gently. My children and I had just left a Buddhist temple dusted with snow, and they were busily negotiating our next destination. One wanted to visit Kyoto market for lunch. And the other more op shops to hunt for more sneakers. Neither of them seemed to be winning and they looked to me to cast the deciding vote. Walking from the gift shop through the imposing temple gates, I played mediator, ignoring the phone ringing in my pocket. But it kept ringing. Over and over until I pulled it out and, when I saw that it said no caller ID, I answered it. The man said his name quickly. All I remember now is the Tom part and that he was phoning from St Kilda police station. It was the location that gave it away. Dad lived down the road. I knew instantly what the call meant. I started sinking, knees buckling, until my son, 16 and almost grown, scooped me up so I didn't hit the ground. Tom didn't need to finish the sentence for me to understand. As he tried to explain what had happened, I began wailing and couldn't make any sense of it. My children crowded me and I realised, horrified, that they didn't know what had been said. And then I understood that I'd have to tell them. I'd have to tell everyone. I whispered to them both, Boppa's dead, using the name my daughter gave him all those years ago. They joined in the sobbing and we inched towards a park bench, huddled in a hug, as I listened for instructions. I had to find someone who would wait with Dad's body until the undertaker arrived. Tom told me to take his number just in case and I wrote it out on the only paper I could find. Unpacking days later in Melbourne, I found it scrawled on the back of the incense box I'd bought in the temple gift shop, when Dad was still alive in my world. That night, after we took the train back to Osaka, I drank whisky in sharp little gulps until everything numbed, and walked the winter streets looking for food and a tattoo parlour where I could cover my skin with something that hurt. Fortunately, we didn't find one, and instead filled our pockets with chocolate and chips from a 7-Eleven. Two days later we flew home. When we arrived in Melbourne, the phone rang endlessly, flowers appeared, meals were delivered and my brother and I shuffled through the days, unsure how to operate now there were no parents left. It was the third funeral I had organised in 12 years. The third eulogy I delivered. The third time grief sucked me under and spat me out. Sign up to Five Great Reads Each week our editors select five of the most interesting, entertaining and thoughtful reads published by Guardian Australia and our international colleagues. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Saturday morning after newsletter promotion But it was the first time someone had died when I hadn't been watching. After the funeral, my brother and I knew we had to turn our attention to Dad's house. Tackling the kitchen first, I opened the fridge. The same fridge that had served our family of four for all those years. With Dad living alone, it was under-utilised, so emptying it didn't take long. I binned the wilting carrots, the greying cabbage, the milk edging past its use-by date, the medicines that should have been tossed long ago and a jar of pickles I recognised as one I'd given him. There were soy sauce fish from a takeaway meal and two square packets of wasabi no longer bright chemical green. On its own shelf was the half block of cheddar. I called out to my brother to ask if he minded if I took it, saying it would save me buying some. He wandered out from whichever room he was lost in and shrugged. Take it, he said. Depending on how many toasties we make, the block might do us for another month or so. And then it'll be gone. Just like Dad. Nova Weetman is an award-winning children's author
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
David Lammy's attempt to stop the Royal Navy transiting the Taiwan Strait is a disgrace
Freedom of navigation is one of the international principles that keeps our planet running. The sea connects everything, and almost all of our trade comes and goes on it. Freedom of navigation and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos) which defines it, is therefore a fundamental part of that fluid, never-ending organism on which we depend. Deny it, or break it, and our economies are at risk. China in particular has long attempted to deny this fundamental principle on which so much depends, and much of the rest of international maritime law as well. Beijing's infamous 'Nine Dash Line' claim to own most of the South China Sea was rejected at the Hague, but it nonetheless acts as if the claim were reality. Chinese warships and coastguard vessels harass, ride off, dazzle and irradiate ships of neighbouring countries every day, and were so aggressive in pursuing a Philippine supply ship recently that a Chinese destroyer smashed off the bow of a Chinese coastguard cutter pursuing the same target, killing several sailors. China also persistently acts as though it has some right to forbid foreign warships from going through the Taiwan Strait – another claim with no basis whatsoever in international law. Today's British government is normally slavishly adherent to international law, but there are exceptions. Reportedly the Foreign Office, led by David Lammy, is attempting to stop the Royal Navy from detaching a frigate from our Carrier Strike Group – currently in the Pacific – and sending it on a trip which would take it through the Taiwan Strait. Planners in the Joint and Maritime Headquarters will be rolling their eyes now and saying something along the lines of, 'Didn't we brief this over a year ago, why is it flaring up now?' Whenever we have a warship needing to go through the Taiwan Strait to get where it is going, we send it through. Not doing so is simply to accept that China is allowed to violate international law whenever it chooses. We sent HMS Spey, our Pacific show-the-flag patrol ship, through the Strait two months ago. It got China's attention, of course it did, but there was barely a whisper here. That's because it was Navy business-as-usual. But add the Strike Group to the equation and it suddenly becomes interesting to everyone, and quite late in the day it seems. So, some perspective. The Taiwan Strait is 70 nautical miles wide at its narrowest point. This is the same as Tower Bridge to Stone Henge. It's not the Suez Canal. It's not even the Dover Strait, which at 21 nautical miles is narrow enough to slightly complicate things – there is no international water in the middle, only British and French territorial waters. The Taiwan Strait is over three times wider and is therefore mostly international waters – the 'High Seas' – in the same way the middle of the Atlantic Ocean is. The right to operate ships through there is immutable. And it's busy – 1,200 ships a week transit through it. But all China has to do, it seems, is rattle its sabre and David Lammy would have us running scared. Those who are happy to appease China normally now take the conversation in one of two directions: 'What if this escalated' and 'Why is the Navy even there?' That last one then branches off into 'colonialism' or 'The Navy should be in the Channel stopping the boats'. The escalation idea is a red herring. China would gain nothing from sinking a British warship and would cause itself all sorts of trouble. Very likely it would find itself unable to import iron ore from Australia, to name just one likely result, and China really, really needs Australian ore. There will be cross words – there always are – but the spectacle of a British government so frightened of words that it will give up its basic rights is a pathetic one. As for the second point – all warships should be back in the UK – hopefully my opening statement on how the whole world is connected by sea answers that. I might also point out that all the Navy could do in the Channel would be pick up migrants and deliver them to hotels even faster than the Border Force and the RNLI are already doing. Meanwhile in the Taiwan Strait, China's strategy is clear – to normalise its illegal claims. Any time a warship abandons plans to run through the Strait, that is a step to the world where indeed, China owns that piece of international water. It seems to me that the way to absolutely guarantee trouble in the long run is to give in to their demands. We should also note that this is not an American-style 'Freedom of Navigation Operation', a FONOP carried out for no other reason than to prove they can. HMS Richmond won't depart from the task group and dash through the Strait, flags flying, guns trained, and then rejoin. She'll be detached for a decent period of time and have sound operational and defence diplomacy reasons for taking this route. In other words, it's not an operation at all, it's just being 'on passage'. Sure, they will be closed up in the operations room onboard as they go through, but mainly because if China does come to say hello it will offer tremendous intelligence gathering opportunities. To sum up, the whole point of deploying a Strike Group – or any warship – is to communicate resolve and willingness to back the rules-based international order. Sending a ship and then telling it to back off communicates exactly the opposite. This will have been years in the planning, probably since HMS Lancaster did exactly the same four years ago. Showing weakness and backing off in the face of unreasonable demands leads to disaster, as events in Ukraine have shown only too clearly.
Sky News
2 hours ago
- Sky News
Experienced skydiver deliberately fell to her death, coroner finds
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