{"id":391872,"date":"2026-01-26T20:42:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T20:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/391872\/"},"modified":"2026-01-26T20:42:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T20:42:07","slug":"bring-him-home-rsf-calls-for-sir-keir-starmer-to-demand-release-of-british-publisher-jimmy-lai-during-visit-to-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/391872\/","title":{"rendered":"Bring him home: RSF calls for Sir Keir Starmer to demand release of British publisher Jimmy Lai during visit to China"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text-align-justify\" dir=\"ltr\">Lai has been found guilty of offences under Hong Kong\u2019s National Security Law, which has widely been\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amnesty.org.uk\/press-releases\/hong-kong-80-people-convicted-under-draconian-national-security-law-should-never-0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">condemned by human rights organisations as draconian<\/a>, including two counts of &#8220;collusion with foreign forces\u201d and conspiring to publish \u201cseditious\u201d material. His sentence will be announced at a later date. Six members of Apple Daily staff as well as two other co-accused have also been found guilty and are awaiting sentencing.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Lai has been in prison continuously since December 2020. Subjected to unlawful conditions of solitary confinement, he is restricted to only 50 minutes of \u201cexercise\u201d per day in a metal cage, which has led to significant deterioration of his health. His family has warned that his fingernails have fallen off and his teeth rotted, and that he has suffered severe weight loss.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Hong Kong has fallen dramatically in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/rsf.org\/index\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">RSF&#8217;s World Press Freedom Index<\/a>, now ranked 135th out of 180 countries and territories surveyed, compared to 18th just two decades prior. China, ranked 172nd, remains the world\u2019s largest jailer of journalists, with at least 123 currently in detention.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lai has been found guilty of offences under Hong Kong\u2019s National Security Law, which has widely been\u00a0condemned by&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":391873,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-391872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/391873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}