Document #2048422
RSF – Reporters Sans Frontières (Author)
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Update - 1st April 2021
Jimmy Lai has been found guilty of “organising and participating in unauthorised assembly” on 18th August 2019. Sentencing to be delivered at a later date.
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Jimmy Lai, 73, founder of Next Digital media group and its flagship newspaper, Apple Daily, and 2020 RSF Press Freedom Awards laureate, was one of the first Hong Kong residents charged under the National Security Law adopted by Beijing and has been detained since December 2020. Jimmy Lai has been constantly harassed by the Hong Kong justice system, as demonstrated by the seven ongoing procedures against him.
“By launching multiple procedures against Apple Daily’s founder, the Hong Kong government clearly seeks to take down a symbolic figure of press freedom”, says Cédric Alviani, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) East Asia bureau head, who calls for the end of this judicial harassment by “dropping all charges against the defendant and immediately releasing him”.
Seven egregious and arbitrary procedures
1 - “Conspiracy to collude with foreign forces”
2 - “Fraud”
3 - “Conspiracy to assist offender”
4 - “Organising and participating in unauthorised assembly”
5 - “Participating in unauthorised assembly”
6 - “Organising and participating in unauthorised assembly”
7 - “Inciting others to take part in unauthorised assembly”
Hong Kong, once a bastion of press freedom, has fallen from 18th place in 2002 to 80th place in the 2020 RSF World Press Freedom Index. The People's Republic of China, for its part, has stagnated at 177th out of 180.