Witnesses against Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai mistreated to drive out confessions: Report

Hong Kong, December 19 : The witnesses against Hong Media media tycoon and activist Jimmy Lai were strongly mistreated by the Chinese authorities to bring out the 'desired' confessions, raising questions about whether his testimony will be voluntary and reliable, an investigative report by The Washington Post stated.
Hong Kong's highest-profile trial since the 2020 crackdown will begin on Monday, with Andy Li Yu-hin as the key witness. Li's testimony will be crucial to the government's case against Jimmy Lai, the billionaire media mogul and founder of Apple Daily.
Lai is charged under the national security law with "colluding with foreign forces." Hong Kong authorities plan to use the prosecution to paint a narrative of the 2019 protests as a US-directed plot aimed at destabilising China.
12 young Hong Kongers, including Li, were trying to flee on boats when they were captured by the Chinese Coast Guard (CCG).
After Beijing passed a draconian new national security law that would crush the territory's remaining freedoms and impose long prison sentences on pro-democracy activists, several young Hong Kongers tried to flee--only to be apprehended in international waters by China, according to The Post.
"They have a plot line, a kind of story," said Beatrice Li, Andy's sister, of the prosecution. "And they need to fit the characters in.
Li's testimony will be key to the government's case against Jimmy Lai, the billionaire media mogul and founder of Apple Daily, the independent newspaper that has now been shut down. Lai is charged under the national security law with "colluding with foreign forces."
Li, a 33-year-old gifted programmer, has already pleaded guilty under the national security law for his role in the democracy movement and is expected to tie Lai to an alleged foreign conspiracy against Hong Kong and China.
Lai, 76, has already been convicted of other crimes, including unlawful assembly and fraud, but the national security charge is the most serious, punishable by up to life in jail.
Several lawyers and activists say that this confluence of events that brought the mogul and the former activist together as defendant and witness is a testament to how far the independence of the city's courts has eroded since the national security law was imposed by Beijing in June 2020.
It also shows how the Hong Kong courts now "resemble the system of justice in mainland China" where coerced testimony is routinely used to secure convictions. Hong Kong police have started airing confessions from jailed protesters on television, mirroring the long-established practice of public, forced confessions in China, the report added.
"We don't have any faith in the process within Hong Kong," said Caoilfhionn Gallagher, the Irish human rights lawyer who leads Lai's international legal team. "Jimmy Lai is being prosecuted under a law that should not exist in a system that has become profoundly unfair."
A spokesman for the Hong Kong government, in a written response to questions from The Post, said all prosecutorial decisions by the Hong Kong Department of Justice "are based on admissible evidence" and that Hong Kong "enjoys independent judicial power" with courts and judges who are "free from any interference."
"Cases will never be handled any differently owing to the profession, political beliefs or background of the persons involved," the spokesman said. "To suggest otherwise is utter nonsense without regard to objective facts."
China's foreign ministry said ahead of the trial that "Jimmy Lai is one of the most notorious anti-China elements bent on destabilising Hong Kong and a mastermind of the riots...responsible for numerous egregious acts."
Li, who has become a devout Christian in his time in detention, spends his days learning languages--Ukraine and Arabic are his current focus--solving crossword puzzles and reciting Psalms, according to people familiar with his situation, The Washington Post reported.
Jimmy Lai's story is lore in Hong Kong. Many in the city can recite how he arrived in the city as a stowaway from China when he was 12, toiling as a child labourer in a garment factory, only to eventually find a popular clothing brand of his own and then direct his wealth towards pro-democracy causes.
It was the June 4, 1989, crackdown on Tiananmen Square in Beijing that prompted his turn to the media. It was "the business of freedom, of delivering freedom," Lai said in a 2016 interview. In 1995, as Hong Kong's handover to China approached, he founded Apple Daily with his own money.
In June 2019, more than a million people took to the streets to peacefully oppose a bill that would allow the transfer of fugitives from Hong Kong to places it did not have an extradition treaty with, notably mainland China.
Among Hong Kong's most prized institutions were its common law courts, where defendants could be assured the right to bail, a fair trial, legal representation and other guarantees absent on the mainland. The bill threatened to erode the legal firewall between the two territories.
According to the report, as demonstrations roiled city streets, apps such as Telegram and the LIHKG online forum had become extensions of the movement, places where methods of resistance and new ideas were debated and voted on by the collective. A group of Hong Kong-based academics wrote in a 2021 paper that the LIHKG forum, in particular, contributed to the "power and sustainability" of the movement and helped articulate justifications for more "radical" tactics.
Li found his way to the online group 'Stand With Hong Kong' (SWHK), his colleagues said and became one of the many young Hong Kongers who were driving this new, leaderless form of protest.
SWHK activists were anonymous, both to the world and--at least at the start--to one another. They worked across cities and time zones.
SWHK grew into a formidable lobbying force, focused on international advocacy. Information on what was underway in Hong Kong was translated and disseminated into different languages; Li was among those who helped with Japanese.
It launched several crowdfunding campaigns, which raised millions for their work, including to fund ads supporting the protests in international papers. The campaigns were a major success, but the funds that were raised on the website GoFundMe needed to be deposited in a US-based bank account, the report added.
Some of the crowdfunded money was transferred to the personal bank account in New York of one of Lai's executives, Mark Simon, an American, and eventually to Andy Li's personal bank account in Hong Kong, according to court documents. Simon was then the group director for Next Digital, Apple Daily's parent company.
Supporting the pro-democracy movement through the media "was what we were doing all along," said Simon in an interview. Apple Daily would print tens of thousands of extra copies on significant protest days in the city. "What these guys were doing with the ads...was part of the program."
Li, his colleagues and sister said, was willing to play that role because he felt financially independent as a freelance programmer, unlike others based in Hong Kong who could be fired by their pro-government companies.
"If he is already the one at risk, then let's put all risk in that basket rather than introducing risk to someone else," Beatrice said of her brother's decision. At the time, nothing they were doing was illegal--not fundraising abroad, lobbying foreign governments or raising attention for the movement.
The mood started to shift in early 2020 as the pandemic ended momentum on the streets. With the city quietening, Beijing passed the national security law, introducing four vague new crimes -- secession, subversion, colluding with foreign forces and terrorism.
On August 9, 2020, national security police fanned out across the city in their first sweep under the new order. Jimmy Lai and his two sons were arrested, while hundreds of officers raided the offices of Apple Daily, The Washington Post reported.
After interception, Chinese coast guard officers brought the 12 young Hong Kongers onto the coast guard ship and handcuffed them.
After landing, they were bused to a police station, then to a hospital where their blood was drawn, before being taken to a detention centre in Yantian, a Shenzhen district separated from Hong Kong by just a narrow inlet. They were immediately separated and kept in single cells, the report further stated.
They were confined to these solitary cells for the first three months. The interrogations were
"relentless" during those initial months, the people familiar with the conditions said.
During the initial months of interrogation, the guards threatened to send them to Xinjiang--where the Chinese government has arbitrarily detained more than a million Muslim Uyghurs and subjected them to torture, forced sterilisation, surveillance and other conditions, according to the United Nations--if they did not detail their attempted escape, The Washington Post reported.
Most of the 12 were not physically abused, but seven people familiar with conditions at the center said screaming could "consistently" be heard coming from one cell: Li's.
"It is likely that what [Li] faced inside was 10 times worse" than the rest, one person said.
In Hong Kong, prominent activists such as Joshua Wong took up the cause of those detained in mainland China. Hashtags such as #save12 and #bringthemback went viral in the city. Beatrice started an account on Twitter, renamed X this year, under the username "andy_is_missing" to raise awareness about her brother's plight, the report stated.
Li's family received their first letter from him in late November 2020. Li wrote that he was "neither bullied nor beaten up" and that he had "hired a lawyer" who helped him navigate legal procedures on the mainland. To Beatrice, he wrote: "Don't continue what you are doing; it is time to stop."
"I have reflected here, seen the situation more clearly, and there is no future in carrying on," Li wrote. "Take a look; I am an example."
Family members of the 11 others received letters that contained similar wording or phrases, particularly as they related to the conditions of detention.
According to the report, Moon and the driver of the boat, Tang Kai-yin, were charged as organisers of the escape and sentenced to two and three years in prison, respectively. Eight, including Li, were charged with illegally crossing into China and sentenced to seven months; two minors in the group were returned to Hong Kong. All "voluntarily" pleaded guilty, according to mainland court documents.
The report also cited the story of Chan Tsz-wah, a former colleague of Li. He was asleep at home in February 2021 when Hong Kong police knocked on his door. Jimmy Lai, already in prison, was rearrested, accused of assisting in Li's escape.
As they interrogated Chan, national security police told him that Li had "betrayed" his friends and told mainland police "everything about everyone," according to a person familiar with the matter.
Li was returned to Hong Kong by mainland authorities on March 22, 2021, and taken to the Siu Lam Psychiatric Center. Li's family was unable to secure his independent legal representation, his sister said, and he continues to be represented by lawyers who have strong government ties, according to The Washington Post.
The report further cited a 2021 paper by the Center for Asian Law at Georgetown University that pinpointed Li's case as echoing "the practice of manipulating, or even dictating, legal representation for defendants in politically sensitive cases," which is "all too common on the Mainland."
Li and Chan were charged with colluding with foreign forces, alongside Lai.
The government's statement of facts characterises the young men as being part of a "syndicate" that "conspired with other" people to request foreign governments sanction or "engage in other hostile activities" against Hong Kong and China.
"Lai and Simon were the masterminds and financial supporters behind the scenes and at the highest level of command of the syndicate," the documents state, referring to Mark Simon, Lai's American associate, whose bank account was briefly used to hold funds for SWHK.
In August 2021, Li and Chan pleaded guilty, the first two to admit to an offence under the national security law.
The report further cited people familiar with the case who speculate that Li and Chan have been offered leniency as part of a deal for agreeing to appear as witnesses, though that cannot be independently confirmed. The Hong Kong government spokesman did not directly address this question when asked by The Post but said all defendants "will undergo a fair trial."
Finn Lau, who founded SWHK and helped direct its activities through 2019 and part of 2020, said the allegations against Lai "distort the truth."
"They accused [Lai] of directing us and pushing us," Lau said, "but it never happened."
Li is expected to take the stand in the new year. As he awaits his turn as a witness, he has continued to write to his family.
He ended a recent letter with his favourite Psalm: "The Lord is my shepherd...though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil," The Washington Post reported.