Rep. Chris Smith Joins Son of Imprisoned Hong Kong Media Tycoon to Call for His Release

Jimmy Lai, the pro-democracy owner of shuttered Hong Kong news outlet Apple Daily, has been held in solitary confinement for five years, according to his son.

Hong Kong media tycoon and pro-democracy supporter Jimmy Lai leaves a police station in Hong Kong on Dec. 3, 2014. Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images

WASHINGTON—Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) and Sebastien Lai, son of imprisoned Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai, are hoping that President Donald Trump will be able to apply some political pressure to secure his release.

“We know that he has raised it publicly, and has not shied away,” Smith told reporters at a news briefing in Washington on Sept. 9. “That’s how things get done.”

Smith, a longtime advocate for victims of the human rights violations of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), also has a bill pending before the Senate that addresses the regime’s practice of forced organ harvesting, among other legislative initiatives.

For his part, the president has said he will try to have Jimmy Lai released when he next meets with CCP leader Xi Jinping.

“I’m going to be bringing it up—I’ve already brought it up—and I’m going to do everything I can to save him,” Trump said in August in an interview with Fox News Radio.

Jimmy Lai, founder of the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, was imprisoned in 2020 following a series of mass protests against Hong Kong’s national security law, which was crafted to silence criticism of the CCP after it took over administration of the former democratic UK colony.

He was accused of violating that law, and has pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and publish seditious material.

The trial was supposed to be brief, his son said, but authorities have repeatedly delayed the process. Closing arguments were given on Aug. 28, but the court said a verdict will be handed down “in good time.”

He has already been convicted of numerous other charges, such as lighting a candle to commemorate victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre. For that alone, he was sentenced to 14 months.

Apple Daily was shut down by the authorities in 2021.

Sebastien Lai said his father, who is diabetic, has been in solitary confinement for five years. He is not allowed access to natural light and has no air conditioning in his cell, where temperatures in the maximum security prison can reach 104 degrees Fahrenheit.

“Even if the conditions were good, which they are not, it is still incredibly worrying for someone his age and [in] his condition,” Sebastien Lai said.

“It’s definitely incredibly urgent, and I honestly don’t know how much longer he has.”

As Trump prepares for an upcoming trip to the UK, Smith and Sebastien Lai said they hoped that the president and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer would unite to secure Jimmy Lai’s freedom, especially considering that he is a British citizen.

In November 2024, 118 leaders from around the world signed a letter calling for Jimmy Lai’s release. His son said he would be “incredibly grateful” if Pope Leo XIV added his voice.

“To the point, my father’s Catholic faith is what’s kept him so strong,” he said. “It’s also, I believe, one of the driving forces of why he has such strong principles.”

Authorities have not allowed his father to attend Mass, but he is occasionally given Communion following international pressure, the younger Lai said.

He said his father, a billionaire businessman, chose not to flee Hong Kong because he feared that it would expose the journalists who had worked for him to persecution by the CCP.

As the highest-profile individual in his media organization, Jimmy Lai believed that if he stayed, he could draw some of the authorities’ attention away from his former employees.