This is the last article you can read this month
You can read more article this month
You can read more articles this month
Sorry your limit is up for this month
Reset on:
Please help support the Morning Star by subscribing here
THE trial of “Asia’s Rupert Murdoch” Jimmy Lai has been postponed after Hong Kong referred his choice of lawyer to Beijing.
The billionaire media tycoon faces charges of colluding with foreign forces during the protests and riots that swept Hong Kong in 2019.
Millions in US funding for Hong Kong’s “democracy movement” were channelled through bodies like the US Agency for Global Media.
He wants British lawyer Timothy Owen to defend him, but Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee has asked Beijing’s National People’s Congress to rule on whether foreign lawyers who don’t usually practice in Hong Kong should be allowed to act in national security cases.
Mr Lai is a leading opponent of Hong Kong’s reintegration into China after 150 years as a British colony.
A close ally of US Republicans including former president Donald Trump, his Apple Daily tabloid, shut down in 2021, was accused of fostering anti-Chinese bigotry including by referring to people from the mainland working in Hong Kong as “locusts.”
