In this episode of In Conversation With, Mary Margaret Olsen sits down with Claire Lai, the daughter of Jimmy Lai, founder of Apple Daily and one of Hong Kong's most prominent pro-democracy voices, who has been held in Stanley Maximum Security Prison since his conviction under the National Security Law. As of this recording, it has been 1,927 days.
The law itself is Claire's first subject. Enacted on the 1st of July 2020, it was, she says, designed with her father specifically in mind and applied to acts committed before it existed. Around 99 per cent of the evidence used to convict him dates to before the law's enactment and concerns activity that was lawful at the time: peacefully advocating for China to honour the promises it made to Hong Kong. The handful of acts cited from after the law came into force amount, in her account, to ordinary political commentary, including a remark her father made about the closure of a Chinese consulate that the prosecution characterised as a request for foreign sanctions. It defies, she says, any natural language or logic to read it that way.
