{"id":76289,"date":"2026-02-09T11:13:53","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T02:13:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/feb\/09\/jimmy-lai-sentencing-china-hong-kong-pro-democracy-businessman"},"modified":"2026-02-09T19:27:58","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T10:27:58","slug":"jimmy-lai-hong-kong-pro-democracy-figure-sentenced-to-20-years-in-prison-for-national-security-offences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=76289","title":{"rendered":"Jimmy Lai, Hong Kong pro-democracy figure, sentenced to 20 years in prison"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Family of media tycoon say he will \u2018die a martyr behind bars\u2019 amid widespread criticism from press freedom groups<\/p>\n<p>Jimmy Lai, the media mogul and prominent pro-democracy activist, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison in Hong Kong for national security offences, a punishment his daughter said could mean \u201che will die a martyr behind bars\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Claire Lai said the sentence was \u201cheartbreakingly cruel\u201d given her 78-year-old father\u2019s declining health, while her brother Sebastien Lai called the sentence \u201cdraconian\u201d and \u201cdevastating\u201d.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/feb\/09\/jimmy-lai-sentencing-china-hong-kong-pro-democracy-businessman\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Family of media tycoon say he will \u2018die a martyr behind bars\u2019 amid widespread criticism from press freedom groupsJimmy Lai, the media mogul and prominent pro-democracy activist, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison in Hong Kong for national securit&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3580,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,50,48,3034,238,672,54,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-china","category-hong-kong","category-jimmy-lai","category-media","category-newspapers-magazines","category-press-freedom","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3580"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76289"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76301,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76289\/revisions\/76301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}