.jpeg?width=1200&auto=webp&trim=0%2C0%2C0%2C0&ssl=1 "Trump says he will raise Jimmy Lai case with Xi Jinping at Beijing summit")
US president Donald Trump has said he will raise the issue of Hong Kong’s jailed media mogul Jimmy Lai during a summit with Chinese president Xi Jinping later this month.
Mr Trump is due to travel to Beijing for a long-awaited summit on 14 and 15 May, an appointment that has already been delayed once by the outbreak of the US-Israeli war on Iran.
That conflict is among the matters expected to be discussed, as well as broader issues of US-China trade and sticking points such as the fate of self-governed Taiwan.
Mr Trump said he brought up Mr Lai’s case when he last met Mr Xi in October, and vowed to do so again in an interview with the conservative Christian news network Salem News Channel on Monday.
Lai, a British citizen and devout Catholic, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for collusion and sedition charges in February this year after a lengthy trial process, a verdict that was met with widespread international criticism. The founder of the now-defunct pro democracy Apple Daily newspaper has been in jail since he was first arrested in December 2020.
Asked about Mr Lai’s case by conservative political commentator Hugh Hewitt, Mr Trump said: “I will be bringing it up [in China].”
“I brought him (Lai) up,” Mr Trump added, referring to his meeting with Mr Xi in South Korea in October. “There’s a little bitterness, I would say, with him and Jimmy Lai. Hong Kong was not as easy.”
Mr Lai’s 20-year sentence – the maximum penalty under Beijing’s national security law – means the 78-year-old is likely to die in jail, even without the growing concerns from his family and supporters over his ill health.
Mr Trump, who promised to “100 per cent get him out” of jail during his election campaign for a second term, previously said he had asked Mr Xi to “consider” releasing Mr Lai.
“I feel so badly,” Trump told reporters in December last year, shortly after he was convicted. “I spoke to President Xi about it and I asked to consider his release.”
“He’s an older man and he’s not well. So I did put that request out. We’ll see what happens.”
Just two months after Mr Trump made those remarks, the court in Hong Kong sentenced Mr Lai in a case that was seen as a barometer of press freedom and judicial independence in the former British colony, which returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
Last week Mr Lai was announced as the winner of a freedom of speech award by Germany’s public broadcaster Deutsche Welle, in recognition of his contributions to Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement.
The award will be presented in absentia on 23 June at the DW Global Media Forum in Bonn, with the DW panel praising him for standing “unwaveringly for press freedom in Hong Kong at great personal risk”.
