The Hong Kong and Chinese authorities must immediately and unconditionally release writer and media publisher Jimmy Lai, PEN International and English PEN said today, following the appalling guilty verdict handed down to Jimmy Lai for exercising his right to freedom of expression.
We are deeply concerned by the guilty verdict against British publisher and writer Jimmy Lai for exercising his right to freedom of expression. This verdict raises serious questions about the ongoing erosion of fundamental rights and press freedom in Hong Kong. We urge the UK government to act immediately and decisively on behalf of Jimmy Lai and his family.
Daniel Gorman, Director, English PEN
The guilty verdict handed down to writer and media publisher Jimmy Lai is nothing less than a travesty and a betrayal of Hong Kong’s once vaunted legal system. Jimmy Lai’s selfless commitment to Hong Kong should be celebrated. Instead, he has been treated with abject contempt by the authorities, who have seen fit to subvert the law into a tool of repression in a bid to silence him and the freedoms he represents. We condemn this injustice and urge the authorities to release him before it’s too late.
Romana Cacchioli, Executive Director of PEN International.
Today, 15 December 2025, writer and media publisher Jimmy Lai was found guilty on two counts of conspiring to collude with foreign forces under Hong Kong’s draconian National Security Law (NSL), and a third count of seditious publications under the territory’s colonial-era sedition law. Lai, who recently turned 78, now faces spending the remainder of his life behind bars, with sentencing due to take place in 2026.
Since Jimmy Lai’s initial arrest on national security charges on 10 August 2020, he has been subjected to over 1,800 days of solitary confinement. He has already served multiple unjust sentences relating to his peaceful advocacy and expression, including a 13-month sentence for briefly attending a vigil in 2020 to commemorate those who died during the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Each unjust conviction is both an example of Jimmy Lai’s commitment to the freedoms that once defined Hong Kong and of the extent to which the authorities are willing to weaponise the legal system in a bid to silence him.
Jimmy Lai’s conviction has been lauded by the mainland government’s liaison office in Hong Kong, which has claimed in a statement that Jimmy Lai’s actions have ‘left a deep wound on the citizens of Hong Kong’. In stark contrast to the Hong Kong and Chinese authorities portrayal of Jimmy Lai, it is notable that the final print edition of Jimmy Lai’s Apple Daily newspaper, before its forced closure, had a print run of over one million copies, over ten times the paper’s typical circulation, in what was a powerful expression of popular support from the territory’s population of 7.5 million.
The NSL, which came into force several months before Jimmy Lai’s arrest, has come to symbolise the Hong Kong government’s abandonment of the territory’s rule of law tradition, with those accused of violating the NSL’s vaguely defined crimes subjected to closed-door trials and judges directly appointed by Hong Kong’s Chief Executive. Its enactment has had a dramatic chilling effect on the territory’s freedom of expression environment, with examples including the systematic removal of politically sensitive books from public libraries, the closure of independent newspapers and bookshops, and reports of widespread self-censorship.
PEN International and English PEN condemn today’s guilty verdict and the wider assault on freedom of expression in Hong Kong. We continue to stand with Jimmy Lai and urge the Hong Kong and Chinese authorities to release him immediately and unconditionally.
