Hong Kong media tycoon and Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai. (photo: Napa Institute)
By Daniel Payne, CNA,
The law’s harsh penalties include life in prison for what the government deems sedition or terrorism, including acts such as damaging public transport facilities.
Multiple Catholic leaders from around the world this week called upon the government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region to release prominent Hong Kong pro-democracy activist and Catholic Jimmy Lai, who has been imprisoned there for nearly three years.
Lai has been an outspoken democracy advocate in Hong Kong for years. He founded the tabloid Apple Daily in 1995 which took a strong pro-democracy stance in the administrative region.
Lai was originally arrested in August of 2020 under that year’s controversial national security law, which was passed by China’s communist-controlled government and sharply curtailed free speech in the region in an effort to quash what the Chinese Communist Party considered subversion and sedition in the separately administered region of Hong Kong. …
*Image: The Heavenly Glory [detail: central section] by Pierre Mignard, 1663 [Val-de-Grâce, Paris]. This depiction of the Blessed Trinity is the centerpiece of Mignard’s fresco for the church’s dome, commissioned by Anne of Austria, wife of King Louis XIII of France. Father, Son, and Holy Spirts are sorrounded by the faithful:
Palmsunday mass, St. Franciskus Xaverius, Catholic church, Arendal, Norway. Pater Sigurd Markussen. April 14, 2019. Own work. Author Jan-Erik Løken. Licensing... I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following license: w:en:Creative Commons, attribution share alike. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. You are free: to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work ....