Russian President Vladimir Putin’s murder of Alexei Navalny is a sobering reminder of just how far dictators will go to silence those with the courage to stand up to thuggery.
In China’s neighboring tyranny, publisher Jimmy Lai is a cheering reminder courage and hope still stand tall.
As a journalist, I first profiled Jimmy in 1993.
I went on to serve on the board of Next Digital, the parent company of his pro-democracy newspaper, Apple Daily.
In the three decades I’ve known him, I have been consistently impressed by his prescience, bravery and integrity.
Lai has been jailed for 1,155 days, most of them in solitary confinement.
Yet he lives as a free man, embracing the credo of his friend Natan Sharansky, who endured nine years in the Soviet gulag.
Lai’s captors will decide when he can walk free, but until then, in his mind he is free — free to pray, read, paint and meditate.
Far from rotting in prison, Lai is freer than he has ever been, those close to him say.
Sen. Jeff Merkley and Rep. Chris Smith, one a Democrat and the other a Republican, nominated Lai last week for the Nobel Peace Prize, showing human-rights concerns can transcend even Congress’ bitter partisanship.
Freedom offers a moral clarity tyrants can never match.
Lai stands accused of a battery of charges in Hong Kong that almost certainly will see the 76-year-old effectively sentenced to life imprisonment.
As Apple Daily’s founder and owner, Lai and his team led a 25-year anti-corruption, pro-freedom crusade.
Authorities jailed Lai at the end of 2020 and shut the newspaper, arresting six of its editors and executives, in mid-2021.
The charges sound serious: collusion with foreign forces and subversion of state power.
But two months into the lengthy trial, prosecutors haven’t shown anything more sinister than Lai doing what newspaper owners like to do — ordering up stories on favorite subjects and speaking out on issues that matter to them.
Lai’s issues are freedom and democracy.
He and his journalists opposed repressive government measures, like a bill that would allow Hong Kongers to be sent to the mainland for trial.
It turns out he was right to worry about the escalating repression.
Lai isn’t guilty of anything more than practicing journalism.
He wanted more democracy and less Chinese Communist interference.
He sought friends around the world and turned to Washington for help — meeting everyone from Mike Pence to Nancy Pelosi to rally support for freedom and democracy in Hong Kong.
Lai believed the promises China made when it took over the British colony in 1997.
Beijing pledged that Hong Kong would continue to enjoy press freedom and all its traditional civil liberties — free speech, the right to protest and the rule of law.
That’s all been thrown out the window since dictator Xi Jinping came to power in 2012.
Anti-government protests in 2019 saw 2 million Hong Kongers — more than one out of every four people — take to the streets.
At the year’s end, an election for low-level officials resulted in a democratic sweep.
Xi didn’t respond to Hong Kong’s cry for freedom by listening or negotiating but by bringing down an iron fist.
A vague and sweeping security law illegally imposed on the city outlawed opposition.
Hong Kong — once among Asia’s freest cities — now holds a staggering 1,796 political prisoners.
Under the national-security-law charges Lai faces, authorities have chucked the constitutional guarantee of a jury trial and handpicked three judges from a secret list.
They even denied him the lawyer he wanted.
Six Apple Daily journalists have been held behind bars since mid-2021.
All have pleaded guilty, but sentencing has been delayed until after Lai’s trial, where several are testifying against their former boss.
In short, the Apple DailySix are hostages.
The city’s security chief boasts of a 100% conviction rate in national-security trials.
To call Lai’s proceedings a kangaroo court would be unfair — to kangaroos.
The case is a mockery of justice that would be thrown out of court — if it weren’t laughed out first — in any self-respecting judiciary.
Navalny and Lai could have run from danger, but they chose to face evil head on.
Navalny’s death underlines an autocrat’s brutality even as the martyred Russian freedom fighter continues to inspire activists.
Lai’s dignity in captivity provides an inspiring example of those fighting for democracy in Hong Kong, China and, indeed, around the world.
Mark L. Clifford is the president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation and a former director of Next Digital, publisher of Apple Daily.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
