Plight of imprisoned Hong Kong ex-publisher Jimmy Lai evokes grief over loss of press freedoms

HONG KONG -- Nearly five years after Hong Kong's pro-democracy Apple Daily shut down, its founder, Jimmy Lai, jailed, the newspaper's former staff and readers are lamenting the loss of the city's press freedoms.Lai, 78, was sentenced Monday under a Beijing-imposed national security law to 20 years in prison, the longest such sentence so far.

His co-defendants, six other former Apple Daily journalists, received jail terms ranging between six years and nine months and 10 years.Officials in both Hong Kong and Beijing defended the case against Lai, with the city's leader John Lee accusing the newspaper of inciting violence and poisoning young minds.

The government insisted his case had nothing to do with press freedom, saying the defendants used journalism as a guise to commit acts that harmed Hong Kong and China.There's no question that things are different in Hong Kong without the Apple Daily.Since it folded, the city’s once freewheeling press scene has changed drastically, its voice was one of many that have been silenced in the former British colony.

“We’ve lost a newspaper that spoke for the people, and there’s no going back,” said William Wong, 66, who had been reading Apple Daily since its founding in 1995.He liked its sharp, to-the-point reporting and critical coverage of current affairs and politics.Lai’s newspaper stood at one end of the media spectrum, openly supporting democracy, while at the other end, China-backed media outlets pushed a pro-Beijing stance.

The Apple Daily's position helped expand the space for other media outlets to operate, said Francis Lee, a journalism professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.“When the one at the front has disappeared, the effect is that the whole spectrum and operating space will become narrow,” Lee said.

After 1997, when Britain handed control of Hong Kong to China, the semi-autonomous territory was promised 50 years of Western-style civil liberties, including freedom of the press.Some fo...