A citizen, not a bargaining chip

This week’s sentencing by Hong Kong High Court of British citizen, Jimmy Lai, to a twenty year jail term, should irrefutably shame the UK government. Democracy activist and free press tycoon Lai, already 78 years of age and in poor health, has been held in mostly solitary confinement for over five years under the territory’s National Security Law (NSL), internationally-recognised as illegitimate.

Guilty only of staunchly defending Hong Kong’s inherited freedoms under the Sino-British Joint Deceleration — which Beijing swore to respect almost 30 years ago — Lai is now almost certainly destined to die in a dank Hong Kong prison cell, having been all but abandoned by the British government and civil service. 

For most of last year I had the privilege to represent the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation here in the United Kingdom, advocating for the release of political prisoners in Hong Kong — including Jimmy and his former Apple Daily colleagues, six of whom were also sentenced this week to lengthy jail sentences for nothing more than promoting the rule of law, press freedom, and the right to peacefully protest in Hong Kong. 

What makes Jimmy’s case unique is, contrary to the propagandists and shills masquerading as government officials in Hong Kong and Beijing, he has never held Chinese citizenship. Jimmy has only ever held British citizenship, and is as British as I am. That his government here in Westminster has repeatedly failed over the last five years to secure his release from universally acknowledged arbitrary detention has passed from politically unacceptable to outright shameful. 

Jimmy’s guilty verdict from a specially-appointed kangaroo court in Hong Kong at the end of last year came as no surprise. Monday’s jail sentence likewise came as no real surprise. But 20 further years in prison, on top of the five already spent in solitary confinement? 

Not only is this sentence — the most severe yet for the thousands of draconian NSL cases — unduly severe, amounting to a death sentence in Jimmy’s declining state (in no small part willingly aided by the Hong Kong authorities), it is a direct middle finger to Keir Stamer and his flailing government, too weak to push back against one of their own citizens locked up on the very definition of trumped-up charges. 

It is a direct middle finger to Keir Stamer and his flailing government

Coming only nine days after Number Ten released an uncharacteristically jazzy video of Starmer’s recent trade mission (read: Operation Begging Bowl) to China. It was nonetheless characteristically devoid of substance, all smoke and mirrors, distraction at its finest away from the crushing reality — that Starmer had sold out this country, cap in hand to the Chinese Communist Party, on perhaps the most embarrassing ‘trade mission’ this country has born witness to. 

Starmer and his front-bench charlatans were quick to point out to multiple economic “successes” from his humiliating trip to Beijing. Aside a relatively mundane visa relaxation announcement, all we heard was reducing tariffs for whiskey. Great for the whiskey industry, no doubt, but this is estimated to raise a mere £50 million a year, to an industry which exports over £5 billion annually. A drop in the ocean. 

And what did Xi gain in return? The almost wholesale outsourcing of research and development of UK biomedical firm AstraZeneca to China (and the US), in addition to an £11 billion investment into China by AZ, and of course, the tinsel on the turd, the Chinese mega-Embassy-come-European CCP spy-hub HQ (don’t listen to the CCP-apologists who claim concerns over the largest CCP presence in Europe, magnified five times the current UK number, with secret tunnels and chambers China are unwilling to disclose, as hysteria). 

Indeed, it is now well known that Xi refused Starmer’s visit until his useful idiots in Downing Street approved his new mega-Embassy. In spite of all this, the British public was assured that Starmer would “raise the case” of Jimmy Lai with Xi. Repeatedly, Starmer’s loyal-to-a-fault allies doubled down in the aftermath of the visit that Jimmy’s case had been raised. Yet, there are no recordings of this in either official read-out: I wonder why?

In fact, I do not wonder why. I know why. Time and again, this Prime Minister has buckled under pressure, devoid of substance and political vision, even down to securing the release of one of his own citizens. It cannot get more shameful than abandoning an aging man in poor health for doing nothing more than exercising his given freedoms enshrined to him by his own government. 

Great Britain is better than this. Thankfully we have seen politicians and commentators from around the world denounce Jimmy’s unlawful and unnecessarily cruel sentencing. By contrast, in a sign of how truly pitifully weak and enfeebled this government are, Foreign Office minsters still refer to Jimmy as a British national — not as a British citizen, which he is. 

Great Britain is better than this

For too long the UK has been weak-willed and soft-kneed when it comes to acting robustly against the violators of the Sino-British Joint Declaration. Time and again we have refused to sanction officials responsible for tearing up the legally enforceable treaty safeguarding the rights and freedoms of all Hong Kongers. 

The government must now use the all-too-often bragged about “direct channel” recently created between Starmer and Xi to urgently press for humanitarian parole for Jimmy. Anything less is a dereliction of duty: this Labour government must now actually prioritise bringing Jimmy home.