Key Highlights
- urged China to reverse what Secretary of State Marco Rubio called an "unjust and tragic" sentence against Hong Kong publisher and democracy activist Jimmy Lai, after Beijing-backed courts handed the 78-year-old a 20-year prison term under the national security law.
- "The conviction shows the world that Beijing will go to extraordinary lengths to silence those who advocate fundamental freedoms in Hong Kong," Rubio said in a statement.
- "The United States urges the authorities to grant Mr.
- Lai humanitarian parole."The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) used Hong Kong’s courts to sentence Lai on Monday, cementing one of the most consequential national security cases since Beijing imposed a sweeping new law in the wake of months-long anti-CCP protests.
- Lai, a billionaire media entrepreneur, founded the now-shuttered Apple Daily newspaper in 1995, once Hong Kong’s most outspoken pro-democracy publication.
