The Innocence of Jimmy Lai By pleading not guilty, he is forcing Hong Kong officials to own their lies. By William McGurn
Jimmy Lai’s whole life—as a refugee, as an entrepreneur, as a champion of Chinese liberty—has been one long exercise in boldness. Now comes his boldest move of all: insisting on his innocence in a Hong Kong court where he doesn’t have a prayer of winning.
On Thursday, Jimmy, 73, is scheduled to go to trial on three charges related to collusion with foreign forces and another involving conspiracy to publish and distribute seditious material. Others arrested for national security offenses have pleaded guilty with the aim of securing a lighter sentence. Not Jimmy.
This trial is the culmination of two years of prosecution on lesser charges, including a conviction for business fraud. There is a logic here, because prosecutors want more than a conviction and prison sentence. They want to paint Jimmy as a corrupt businessman who worked with foreigners to undermine China.
Under the new national security law, Jimmy faces the possibility of life in prison. There is not a man, woman or child in Hong Kong who doesn’t believe the verdict is already in. The authorities are taking no chances either, having Jimmy tried before three national security judges rather than a jury.
To what possible purpose, then, is his plea of not guilty? Certainly it isn’t for a better deal for himself. If that’s what he was looking for, Jimmy would have left Hong Kong and lived abroad in comfort when it became clear he was going to be arrested.
Simply put, Jimmy is making what may be his last stand for truth. The larger prosecution narrative is that Jimmy is selling out China to the West. But Jimmy has never, for example, advocated independence for Hong Kong or Taiwan and has always insisted protests must be peaceful.
All he asks is for the world to hold China to its promises. This is precisely the threat to China’s narrative, under which no Chinese could ever desire freedom or protest Beijing on his own. It isn’t unlike what is now being said about the protests on the mainland: It’s all the work of the CIA.
In Hong Kong, the government has also fought Jimmy’s hiring of a British lawyer to defend him. When the courts upheld his right to pick his lawyer, the Hong Kong government asked Beijing to intervene to get the desired outcome. In this way, Jimmy has succeeded in forcing the reality of Hong Kong’s legal system out in the open: Its autonomy is respected only when it does what Beijing wants. Thus has Jimmy helped expose what has become of the rule of law, once Hong Kong’s most precious asset.
Lies have always been the foundation of communist authority. Communists also have a habit of insisting that their victims embrace the lies. In Arthur Koestler’s “Darkness at Noon,” Rubashov is convicted of treason on what he knows are false charges. Nevertheless, he confesses before he is shot because he is a faithful communist who in the end puts the party’s needs first.
Probably most of us would agree to anything if it meant we might see our families again. So we shouldn’t be too hard on those who give in. Jimmy is the first to forgive former friends and associates who have turned on him.
Still, this should make us admire all the more those who refuse. And not only Jimmy. There are many others in jail in Hong Kong, alone and unknown, who are forcing their jailers to own the lie.
Jimmy’s case is personal for me because our families are so intertwined. This makes their anguish particularly vivid and unsettling. Then again, so is the love and sense of purpose that keeps them strong.
As for Jimmy himself, he is in prison and at peace with his not-guilty plea. It’s his persecutors who are insecure and fearful. Does anyone believe Hong Kong and China will emerge from this trial with more credibility? Or will it only increase the chances that Jimmy wins a Nobel Peace Prize—not unlike Liu Xiaobo, another champion of Chinese freedom awarded the prize in 2010 while in prison.
To get by under communism, a man must say one thing in private and something else in public. So it was in the Soviet Union, where Natan Sharansky was arrested and falsely accused of treason in 1977. “If my aim is physical survival,” he told an interviewer in 2013 about his experience in jail, “then the KGB will defeat me.” He aimed instead to live as a free person—which meant never, ever assenting to the lie.
By insisting on his innocence, Jimmy Lai knows he has surrendered any hope for leniency. But he is showing that a man can live as a free person, even in a Chinese prison, as long as he refuses to lie. Hong Kong’s Communist-backed authorities have yet to realize that he’s no longer really on trial. They are.
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