TOP NEWS
This week the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong (CFHK) Foundation placed a full-page ad in The New York Times commemorating the third anniversary of the closure of Apple Daily on June 24, 2021. Founder Jimmy Lai has been in jail since December 2020 and faces a life sentence.
The ad reads, “We Stand for Press Freedom. We Stand for Apple Daily. We Stand for Jimmy Lai.”
CFHK Foundation President Mark Clifford, who was on the board of Apple Daily's parent company Next Digital, wrote a blog about Hong Kong’s crackdown on press freedom, Jimmy Lai's pursuit of truth, and the significance of the newspaper's forced closure three years ago. Read more here.
Jimmy Lai's Trial Update
Lai’s trial is adjourned until July 24th, when his lawyers will argue that the case should be thrown out.
Detailed trial updates available here: Support Jimmy Lai
Hong Kong
Mitigation hearings for the trial of the Hong Kong 47 began this Tuesday. Five defendants submitted pleas for lenient sentences, including Benny Tai, Gordon Ng, Au Nok-hin, Andrew Chiu, and Ben Chung. Judges rejected Tai’s claim he had a limited role in a subversion scheme after the National Security Law was implemented in 2020. The court will continue the hearing next Tuesday for defendants who stood in the Hong Kong Island constituency of an unofficial primary election in July 2020. The election aimed to shortlist opposition candidates in a bid to win a majority in the city’s legislature.
Police have charged a 29-year-old man with three counts of sedition under Hong Kong's new security law for graffiti on the backs of bus seats. According to police, the man is suspected of “writing words with seditious intention on multiple occasions on the back of bus seats on different public buses in March and April” in contravention of the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance.
In an inspection report, Hong Kong’s Education Bureau noted that students at two schools sang the national anthem too softly. The report recommended teachers "give reminders and help students develop a habit of singing the national anthem loudly."
UK - Hong Kong
Lord Neuberger was part of a five-judge panel on Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal reviewing an unauthorised assembly case. The seven defendants in this case included prominent Hong Kong pro-democracy figures like Martin Lee and Jimmy Lai. Mark Sabah, the UK and EU Director of the CFHK Foundation, told The Guardian that Mr Neuberger’s continued presence on the Hong Kong bench was “astonishing”. Neuberger is among the seven foreign judges who sit on Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal, the city’s apex court.
The CFHK Foundation called for the judges to step down in its recent report, “Lending Prestige to Persecution: How Foreign Judges are Undermining Hong Kong’s Freedoms and Why they Should Quit.”
Flame of Freedom Blog🔥
Hong Kong Handover and China’s Broken Promises – London Must Hold Beijing to Account
This blog is authored by Mark Sabah, UK Director at the CFHK Foundation.
“Hong Kongers under the age of 27 were not born when Britain surrendered perhaps its most successful colony ever, yet they are suffering the consequences of the UK’s lack of effort in defending it. This must change. And it must change fast.”
Read More Here.