SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Jimmy Lai took the stand in Hong Kong this week after four years of solitary confinement. Jimmy Lai is 77 and founded the now-shuttered news outlet Apple Daily that often criticized the Chinese regime. He is accused of plotting with foreign forces to organize the anti-government protests of 2019 in Hong Kong. His latest trial begins the same week in which 45 pro-democracy activists and lawmakers were sent to prison in Hong Kong.
Sebastien Lai is the son of Jimmy Lai and is in the United States, and he joins us now. Mr. Lai, thanks so much for being with us.
SEBASTIEN LAI: Thank you very much for having me.
SIMON: How did your father look and sound?
LAI: So I haven't had the audio from the testimony, but from my understanding, though his health seems to have, you know, gotten quite a bit worse - he's more frail - he sounds strong, you know. They haven't broken his spirit, and they haven't broken his mind, which is a small amount of comfort given that he's spent the last almost four years now in solitary confinement in the maximum-security prison with no access to the Eucharist, and he doesn't get natural light at the moment, either.
So the governments are trying to break him, but they have not managed to do that. So it's a little bit of comfort.
SIMON: He testified in court this week, according to reports, all I was doing was carrying a torch to the reality. I was struck by that phrase. What did he want Apple Daily to do?
LAI: He started Apple Daily in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Though he had been tremendously successful in the retailing space with Giordano, which was a fashion brand, he decided that he needed to defend the freedoms of Hong Kong when it was going to be handed over back to China in 1997. So he started Apple Daily with a basis that information - truth, as he says, you know, shining a light on information, is choice and choice is freedom, so - though it was a hard path to walk, you know.
In the last 30 years, our houses had been firebombed, you know, threats. He felt it very exhilarating because every day he went to work with his colleagues and give truth and information to the people of Hong Kong and through that gave freedom. And the people of Hong Kong reciprocated. I mean, Apple Daily was the biggest newspaper in Hong Kong. But more importantly, it was pro-democracy and wasn't afraid to criticize the government, wasn't afraid to criticize corruption, mobsters and businesspeople who broke the law.
SIMON: Why did your father decide to do that and not just stay in the fashion business?
LAI: My father had a very good line, and he said, you know, Hong Kong is so poor, the only thing they have is money. My father came from Communist China and landed in Hong Kong when he was 12 years old. And he realized the value of freedom, you know, going from a place with no freedom to a place with all the freedoms that the rule of law, free press and whatnot that they had.
And he really fell in love with that, and he felt a need to throw his name and his all in to fight for that freedom because he knew that these freedoms wasn't something that had appeared out of nowhere. It was on the back of people who defended it, fought for it and some people who died for it.
SIMON: We should mention, too, Apple Daily wasn't some kind of dry academic tome, was it? It was a tabloid.
LAI: Yeah. It was very colorful. As Dad liked to put it, you had to have a large base. So it was the first newspaper to be in color, use a more colloquial tone and incredibly colorful journalism but wasn't afraid to criticize the government. So it had that sort of entertaining aspect of it, but also the very serious hard-hitting news.
SIMON: And, Mr. Lai, I mean, realistically, what can the attention of the world do?
LAI: A lot, actually, in a situation like Hong Kong. You see, one of the reasons why Hong Kong still tells you that they have all these freedoms is because it's a financial center. It's currency is trust. It's trust that your transaction will clear, that you'll get a fair trial. It's trust that you could speak out if you see any corruption. And that has completely disappeared. I mean, who would trust a place that tells you that they still have the free press and send 200 police officers to raid the biggest newspaper, arrest its founder and some of his colleagues, or indeed, sentence pro-democracy politicians for holding primaries to up to 10 years?
SIMON: New administration's coming into power in the U.S. What would you like them to do?
LAI: My father's case has been incredibly bipartisan, and we've been very grateful that President Trump was asked in a interview, not too long ago, whether he would help free my father. And President Trump says, yes, 100%. I'll get him out. So look, it's about freeing him, but it's about saving his life. My father's a very strong man mentally and spiritually, but at his age, at 77, in the conditions he's been held in, he does not have long left.
SIMON: Sebastien Lai, the son of Jimmy Lai, who's on trial now in Hong Kong. Thank you so much for being with us.
LAI: Yeah. Thank you very much for shining a light on my father's story. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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