LONDON, May 14, 2025 – Yesterday, Apple Daily newspaper founder and fearless press freedom advocate Jimmy Lai won the prestigious Award for Courage at the 8th Copenhagen Democracy Summit in Denmark.
The award, supported by Axel Springer Freedom Foundation, recognises individuals who demonstrate exceptional bravery in their commitment to human rights, democracy, and freedom, often at significant personal risk, epitomised by Jimmy Lai’s courage in standing up for press freedom and democratic values in Hong Kong.
Previous winners of the prize include the Russian opposition leader and former political prisoner Vladimir Kara-Murza, and a heroine who runs underground schools for girls in Afghanistan and thus needs to remain anonymous.
Jimmy Lai’s son, Sebastien Lai, who campaigns around the world for his father’s freedom, accepted the award. Other notable speakers at the summit, which is hosted by the Alliance of Democracies Foundation, included the foundation’s founder and summit convenor — former Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen — the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas, former British prime ministers David Cameron and Boris Johnson, former President of Taiwan Tsai Ing-wen, and former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi.
Jimmy Lai, a 77-year-old British citizen, has been imprisoned in Hong Kong for almost 1,600 days on political charges related to his championing of Hong Kongers’ right to enjoy the rights and freedoms promised under the territory’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law, initially through the media titles he owned and most recently during his ongoing and much-delayed national security trial.
Despite persistent persecution at the hand of the authorities, Jimmy Lai has not wavered in his commitment to speaking truths the Hong Kong authorities do not want to hear. The court is scheduled to hear closing submissions for his trial on August 14, with a verdict expected before the end of the year.
In his acceptance speech, Sebastien Lai said:
“My father’s alleged crime is founding the largest newspaper in Hong Kong and advocating for freedom and democracy. Escaping Communist China, he understood how fear is used to control people. He also understood the power of truth to liberate people from those fears [and] that information is choice and choice is freedom.”
Jonas Parello-Plesner, Executive Director of Alliance of Democracies Foundation, said:
“Jimmy Lai stands as a beacon of Hong Kong’s proud press freedom tradition. In my office hangs a banner from the Hong Kong demonstrations, given to me by a Hong Kong friend. It simply reads ‘100% FREE.’ That’s the future Hong Kongers deserve—Jimmy should be 100% FREE.”
