{"id":463052,"date":"2026-02-09T04:13:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T04:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/463052\/"},"modified":"2026-02-09T04:13:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T04:13:08","slug":"hong-kong-court-jails-pro-democracy-media-tycoon-jimmy-lai-for-20-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/463052\/","title":{"rendered":"Hong Kong court jails pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai for 20 years"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Jimmy Lai&#8217;s son criticises Starmer for not &#8216;doing enough&#8217; when he met Xipublished at 02:33 GMT<\/p>\n<p>02:33 GMT<\/p>\n<p>      <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Sebastien Lai posing for a photo at a table. He's wearing a suit and behind him is a poster featuring Jimmy Lai\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/550b69cd-e80f-40a9-bef4-fe0b9fb2a426.jpg.webp.webp\"  width=\"1022\" height=\"574\" class=\"ssrcss-egie1y-Image edrdn950\"\/>Image source, Getty Images<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Jimmy Lai\u2019s son Sebastien had earlier said the UK has not done enough to advocate for his father\u2019s release. His criticism came days after Keir Starmer visited Beijing, making him the first British Prime Minister to do so in eight years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">\u201cIf it is so important, then surely there should be some conditionalities put on my father\u2019s release. The trip was a big thing to have been given away,\u201d the younger Lai said at a parliamentary hearing last week on his father\u2019s case, according to The Guardian.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The \u201cvalues [that the UK stands for] are being locked up along with\u201d his 78-year-old father, Lai said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The UK\u2019s All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arbitrary Detention and Hostage Affairs issued a statement following Starmer\u2019s visit, saying that \u201can opportunity to secure [Jimmy Lai\u2019s] release has been squandered by weak diplomacy\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">\u201cThese opportunities will cost Jimmy Lai his life,\u201d the group said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jimmy Lai&#8217;s son criticises Starmer for not &#8216;doing enough&#8217; when he met Xipublished at 02:33 GMT 02:33 GMT&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":463053,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-463052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463052\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}