Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Hours after 78-year-old father, Catholic convert, and journalist Jimmy Lai was sentenced by a Hong Kong court to 20 years in prison Feb. 9, his daughter spoke with CatholicVote Vice President of Advocacy Joshua Mercer about her reaction to the sentencing and the trust in God that is carrying the Lai family through.
The severe punishment of the court is essentially a death sentence for her father, who has already been in prison for five years and is “in failing health,” Claire Lai told Mercer Feb. 9.
“The conditions he's kept in are awful," she added. "He is only sustained by his faith. Even the 10-year sentence or even less would have been a death sentence.”
Claire said that before the sentencing, she had mixed feelings: hope together with a desperate frustration with the dragged-out, humiliating process with an outcome that seemed predetermined.
“Now that [the sentence] is in, I am hopeful that the sovereigns can come to a political solution and my father can be released soon,” Claire added.
The charges against her father were largely related to his work in journalism, she explained. He was convicted on two counts of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and one count of conspiracy to publish “seditious” messaging. He founded the independent newspaper The Apple Daily in 1995, and it became the largest independent media outlet in Hong Kong, she noted.
“People have referred to [the Apple Daily] as basically a conscience for the people,” Claire said. “I mean, it was my dad who started Apple Daily because he believed that by giving information to people who yearned for it, he was allowing them to exercise their agency.”
“Therefore, it was like giving them freedom,” Claire said, adding that in founding the publication, Lai saw it as contributing to a marketplace of information and ideas in Hong Kong.
The “seditious publications,” Claire later explained, were “just any kind of publication that is critical of the government.” Lai published “normal armchair commentary” about current international events, such as an op-ed on a doctor sounding the alarm about COVID-19 in China and the closing of a Chinese embassy in Dallas, Texas.
“Things like that, it was like that. We're commenting after the fact. And all of these things were criminalized,” Claire said, “and my father took the stand for three months, but all they've proven is that he is a man who loves God, loves his family, and loves freedom, and truth is an essential part of it, and now they've sentenced him for that to 20 years in jail.”
Mercer noted that under the United Kingdom (UK), Hong Kong had been a “bastion of freedom” marked by a thriving market economy and democracy. China acquired Hong Kong from the UK in 1997, after which those hallmarks of freedom began to wither. Claire observed that the storyline of Hong Kong’s decline can be traced in the “landscape of my father’s life.”
Lai was born in China, but at age 12 he fled by boat to Hong Kong in 1961. He later pursued entrepreneurial work in the manufacturing industry, Claire noted. She added that he realized many successful business people spoke English, so he taught himself the language – and how to read balance sheets.
Lai “sought to defend those freedoms that he came to know,” Claire said, “and defend the freedoms that we were guaranteed, that China in its treaty with the United Kingdom had said it would not interfere with.”
And then, about five years ago, “it just took a massive nose dive,” Claire said. Political pressure began to mount against The Apple Daily, and Claire recalled her family being targeted and menaced.
“There were people who were leaving skinned dogs outside our home. There were people who tried to set our home on fire, and so on and so forth,” Claire said. She added that both her parents “very much protected” their children from these attacks and threats.
Speaking about what inspired her father to become such an advocate for freedom, Claire emphasized the work of the Holy Spirit in her father’s life. She recalled how her father was born when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was just coming to power. Her father quit school and worked to make spare change by carrying luggage or shining shoes, she explained, and one day, someone who had no spare change paid Lai with part of a chocolate bar. This was the first time Lai had ever had chocolate, and he asked the man where he was from, to which he replied, Hong Kong.
Lai thought then that “Hong Kong must be paradise, because it’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted,” Claire recalled with a laugh.
Her father once told her about a key moment in his life that he said taught him the importance of responsibility, she said.
Just before he fled on the back of a boat to Hong Kong, his mother, who was deeply worried for him, had a piece of gold sewn into his clothing. But as he was getting onto the ship, Lai witnessed someone being thrown out because he had money.
“So he took that piece of gold and he threw it on the floor. And in that moment, he chose hope. He chose opportunity, and he chose hard work over that piece of gold,” Claire said, “and he chose freedom.”
“It wasn't until later that he knew he was guided by the Holy Spirit and that he came to know those freedoms,” Claire continued, “and there's a certain amount of courage that, to stay and defend those [freedoms] that can only be explained by — however much you love them — that can only be explained by the Holy Spirit. And I think early on we recognized that's what guided my father.”
Because of that realization about the Holy Spirit’s guidance of their father, his family was able to trust in God’s provision for him even when they worried about his plight over the past five years.
“Because we knew that he was guided by the Holy Spirit,” Claire said.
The interior peace she has despite the horrific outcome of the trial comes from her faith, Claire said, including her devotion to the Virgin Mary.
She explained that her family was informed that a verdict was coming Dec. 12 — the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The sentencing was given on the feast of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, a Marian visionary.
“It's almost like the Blessed Mother is telling us that she is watching over our father and continuing to intercede on his behalf,” Claire said. Such a thought might seem “far-fetched” to some, but “there’s no better person to intercede on my father’s behalf.”
Claire added that there have been many occasions when she’s had doubts, but the letters her father has sent her, each ending in prayer, have been a source of encouragement.
In one of the latest letters, her father told her “that Our Lord is all-seeing and all-knowing and He knows better than anyone what is best” for Lai. “And he ends [the letter] with saying that he is in His hands absolutely,” Claire said. “It gave me such comfort, so if he has that kind of confidence, it definitely inspires me to just try to be just a bit more virtuous and try to be a bit more Christlike, and try to trust in Divine Providence.”
Claire asked for people to continue to pray for her father, saying “I know he is very much sustained by your prayers.”
Looking ahead at diplomatic options for her father, Claire noted that President Donald Trump has spoken about Lai a number of times and that U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a statement on the sentencing Feb. 9.
“We are so incredibly grateful for their support,” she said. “They have a proven track record of freeing the unjustly detained. We hope our father is next.”
She noted that the family is grateful for those continuing to spread Lai’s story and concluded with a word of encouragement to anyone else going through difficult times. Lai has continued to evangelize in prison, she said, drawing pictures of the crucifixion on pieces of paper, together with instructions on how to pray, and distributing the makeshift pamphlets among other political prisoners.
She recalled how he encouraged another prisoner, and once told her during an emotional visit at the prison to find refuge under the cross of Christ.
“When it gets too much, pretend like you're hiding under the crucifixion at His feet,” she recalled her father telling her, “and just offer your suffering to Him.”
“It's a reminder,” she said, “that if you want to feel the grace of God, you don't have to look far.”