Originally published at National Catholic Register
EDITORIAL: Lai’s testimony in court has highlighted the unswerving determination of this heroic Chinese Catholic to tell the truth — no matter the personal cost.
Media magnate Jimmy Lai, who has been unjustly imprisoned in solitary confinement for nearly four years because of his support for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, continues to testify in his own defense, witnessing as much to his Catholic faith as to his innocence.
Lai’s testimony, which began on Nov. 20, is exposing the flimsiness of the charges against him. But even more, it highlights the unswerving determination of this heroic Chinese Catholic to tell the truth — no matter the personal cost.
Of course, truth has never had anything to do with the trumped-up charges leveled against Lai. Local Chinese authorities claim he colluded with a broad range of foreign actors, including senior members of the Trump administration, with the objective of separating Hong Kong from China’s control. This is a total fiction. Lai’s “crime,” as publisher of the pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper, was to allow his publication to report accurately about Beijing’s continuing betrayals of its 1997 promises to preserve Hong Kong’s existing civil liberties for at least 50 years, which the communist
