In exclusive images taken by The Associated Press in recent weeks, Lai, 75, is seen with a book in hand wearing shorts and sandals, accompanied by two guards at Stanley prison. He looks slimmer than when he was photographed in February 2021.
Lai is allowed to go outside for 50 minutes a day to exercise. Unlike other inmates, who play soccer or exercise in groups, Lai walks alone in what looks like a 5-by-10-meter (16-by-30-foot) courtyard surrounded by barbed wire under the scorching Hong Kong summer sun before to return to his cell without air conditioning.
Lai, who was an editor at the now-defunct Apple Daily, disappeared from public view in December 2020 after being detained under a security law imposed by Beijing to crush a massive pro-democracy movement that began in 2019 and ousted hundreds of thousands of people. to the streets. More than 250 activists have been detained under the security law and have vanished into the Hong Kong legal system.
Previously, photographers could take pictures of activists at another detention center in Lai Chi Kok on their way to and from the court. Authorities began blocking that line of sight in 2021 by having detainees walk a covered path.
In another case, an appeals court was scheduled to rule Monday on challenges by Lei and six other activists against their convictions and sentences on charges of organizing and participating in an unauthorized assembly nearly four years ago. The others are Lee Cheuk-yan, Margaret Ng, Leung Kwok-hung, Cyd Ho, Albert Ho, and Martin Lee.
Lai, a British citizen, is charged with conspiring with foreign forces to endanger national security and conspiring to call for sanctions or blockades against Hong Kong or China. He also faces a charge of conspiring to print seditious publications, under a colonial-era rule increasingly used to crush dissent.
He was scheduled to go to trial last December but was postponed to September as the Hong Kong government asked Beijing to block his attempt to hire a British defense lawyer.
“My father is in prison because he stood up to power for decades,” Lai’s son, Sebastien, said in a May statement before a US government committee, the Congressional Executive Committee on China.
“He will continue to stand up to power and refuse to be silenced, even though he has lost everything and could die in prison,” Sebastien Lai said. “I am very proud to be his son.”
Lai is allowed two 30-minute visits from relatives or friends a month. Visitors are separated by glass and communicate by phone.
In a separate case, the former editor was sentenced in December to nearly six years in prison on fraud charges.
A court in May rejected Lai’s request to halt his security trial on the grounds that it was presided over by judges chosen by Hong Kong’s head of government. It is a break from traditional laws that China had vowed to uphold for 50 years after the former British colony returned to China in 1997.
Lai suffers from diabetes and was diagnosed with hypertension in 2021 when he was already in custody. He is considered a category A prisoner, given to prisoners who have committed the most serious crimes, such as murder.
FOUNTAIN: Associated Press
