UK and US-based figures named in Jimmy Lai trial dismiss ‘sham’ allegations

‘Beijing now believes they can threaten foreign nationals with impunity,’ British activist Luke de Pulford tells The Independent

Jimmy Lai is led into a police van as he heads to court (Getty)

Hong Kong rights activists based in Britain and the US have responded to being named as so-called co-conspirators in the national security trial of media mogul Jimmy Lai.

Mr Lai, 76, who was a leading critic of Xi Jinping’s Chinese Communist Party, is facing life imprisonment on two charges of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces – including calling for sanctions against Hong Kong and Chinese officials – under the draconian new national security laws.

The founder of the now-defunct pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily is also charged with conspiracy to publish seditious publications.

On Tuesday, lead prosecutor Anthony Chau accused a number of foreign nationals, including British and Hong Kong activists and several senior Washington officials, of colluding with Mr Lai, outlining details including WhatsApp records for the first time in the trial.

Mr Chau said at least seven people acted as Mr Lai’s “agents” or “intermediaries” either by helping him, receiving information, or working under his instructions.

Those named included British rights campaigner Luke de Pulford, Benedict Rogers, founder of the UK-based Hong Kong Watch group, exiled activist Finn Lau, Japanese politician Shiori Yamao, former US deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz and financier Bill Browder among others.

Luke de Pulford, the head of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, rejected the allegations as “fabricated” and “redolent of a legal system” which he said has become a tool of mainland China.

“Beijing has pushed red line after red line, and got away with it again and again,” Mr De Pulford said in a video statement and demanded sanctions against Hong Kong chief John Lee.

Speaking to The Independent, Mr De Pulford said calls for sanctions against Mr Lee and the Hong Kong Police Force for their disproportionate use of force against protesters were long overdue, as “Beijing now believes they can threaten foreign nationals with impunity”.

“The broad message from Beijing is ‘we dare you to do something about this’. By dragging foreign nationals into the sham trial of Jimmy Lai, Beijing is crossing another rubicon and posing a direct challenge to the governments of those citizens,” he said.

Asked about his interactions with Mr Lai, Mr De Pulford said he met him a couple of times, both through a mutual friend.

“I admire him greatly, but never worked with him directly on anything, and certainly not Hong Kong.”

The British government abstaining from sanctioning individuals in Hong Kong like the US, which has sanctioned over a dozen city officials, has made a “mockery of the UK’s commitment to its values”, he said.

“Jimmy’s case shows that confidence in the rule of law has all but evaporated. Yet foreign businesses want to continue making money in the city as if nothing has happened. It’s time the UK advised them accurately on business risk. The UK should be doing all this as a minimum,” he said.

IPAC, a group of more than 300 lawmakers in 33 countries, condemned attempts to implicate several of its members in the “sham” trial and said in a statement it was an “unacceptable infringement of the rights of foreign citizens”.

Former Tory leader and UK co-chair of IPAC Sir Iain Duncan Smith said the trial relies on coerced testimony from Mr Lai and demanded sanctions.

“Words are cheap. It’s time we took the action necessary to show Beijing that we are willing to pay more than lip service to our values,” he said.

Former US consul general to Hong Kong James Blair Cunningham, who was also named, said: “The idea that it is a crime for him [Lai] to speak to politicians, business leaders, international media and activists, as well as myself as a former diplomat, is ludicrous in the extreme.”

Mr Lai next to a copy of Apple Daily before his arrest (AP)

Benedict Rogers said that Mr Lai’s alleged criminal interactions with various foreigners “ought to be regarded as entirely normal legitimate activity” for a newspaper publisher. The trial demonstrated “just how dramatically and extensively Hong Kong’s basic freedoms and the rule of law have been dismantled”, he added.

The prosecutors presented a diagram in court illustrating Mr Lai’s purported political influence on the international stage, involving interactions with officials in the US including Donald Trump, Mike Pence, and Mike Pompeo – serving as president, vice-president, and secretary of state at the time.

These figures were part of a group of 27 foreign individuals and three Taiwanese “collaborators” identified as contributing to Mr Lai’s pro-democracy ambitions.

The prosecution presented Mr Lai’s private WhatsApp group chats with Mark Simon, a former US intelligence agent, former deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Mr Cunningham, who were seeking sanctions against Chinese officials.

Police stop activist Alexandra Wong (centre), also known as Grandma Wong, as she carries a British flag outside the court (Getty)

“I think the [best] sanction at this initial stage is to freeze the bank [accounts] of China officials’ corrupted money in US and Europe,” Mr Lai allegedly said in a message dated May 2020, according to the South China Morning Post.

Mr Chau this week cited a total of 161 Apple Daily articles as “examples of seditious publications ... with a view to polluting the minds of the impressionable ones”.

“Under the guise of fighting for freedom and democracy”, Mr Chau said, the media tycoon had since June 2019 made requests for foreign countries, in particular the US, to impose sanctions against the Chinese and Hong Kong governments.

Mr Lai entered a not guilty plea on Tuesday to three charges of sedition and collusion with foreign forces.

On Wednesday Mr Lai again appeared for the hearing as the prosecutor cited multiple Apple Daily news articles, advertisements and commentaries written by Mr Lai as well as his WhatsApp communications with his management team at the paper.

Around 31 examples of alleged seditious content published by the newspaper between June 2019 and January 2020 were presented. All of them relate to the period of citywide unrest before Beijing imposed the national security law on 30 June 2020.