\n<\/p>\n
The jailed media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai has been awarded Deutsche Welle\u2019s freedom of speech award for his contribution to Hong Kong\u2019s pro-democracy movement.<\/p>\n
The German public broadcaster said on Thursday that Lai would be presented in absentia with the 12th iteration of the award on 23 June at the DW Global Media Forum in Bonn.<\/p>\n
Deutsche Welle\u2019s director general, Barbara Massing, praised the 78-year-old founder of the now-shuttered news outlet Apple Daily for standing \u201cunwaveringly for press freedom in Hong Kong at great personal risk\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith Apple Daily, he gave journalists a platform for free reporting and a voice to the democracy movement in Hong Kong,\u201d she said. \u201cHis commitment reminds us that press freedom is never a given \u2013 it must be constantly defended. With the DW freedom of speech award, we honour his indispensable dedication to democratic values.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lai, a British citizen, was one of Hong Kong\u2019s most prominent and vocal pro-democracy advocates before his imprisonment. He provided financial backing to democratic parties and politicians and took part in mass protests against Beijing\u2019s rule in 2019 and 2020.<\/p>\n
Authorities arrested Lai in 2020, accusing him of using the Apple Daily and his political connections to lobby for foreign governments to impose sanctions on China and Hong Kong.<\/p>\n
A Hong Kong court sentenced him to 20 years in prison in February on charges that include \u201cconspiracy to collaborate with foreign forces\u201d and publishing \u201cseditious material\u201d. He was convicted under the city\u2019s draconian national security law, imposed by the Chinese Communist party in 2020.<\/p>\n
The ruling was condemned as politically motivated by rights groups and the British government, with Human Rights Watch warning that the length of his sentence amounted to \u201ceffectively a death sentence\u201d.<\/p>\n
Lai\u2019s conviction was the culmination of a years-long saga that critics say represents Hong Kong\u2019s transformation from a largely free city after its return to China in 1997 \u2013 following more than 150 years of British rule \u2013 to one where dissent is fiercely suppressed.<\/p>\n
Beijing says the imposition of the law was necessary to restore stability to the city.<\/p>\n
Lai, who was born in southern China in 1947 and fled to Hong Kong in 1960, said he owed \u201ceverything to the people of Hong Kong\u201d and that a prison term would be \u201credemption\u201d for the \u201cwonderful life\u201d the territory had given him.<\/p>\n
Additional reporting from Yu-chen Li.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The jailed media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai has been awarded Deutsche Welle\u2019s freedom of speech award for his contribution to Hong Kong\u2019s pro-democracy movement. The German public broadcaster said on Thursday that Lai would be presented in absentia with the 12th iteration of the award on 23 June at the DW Global Media Forum in Bonn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48942,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[4935,2208,533,2794,7784,2695,235,7785,11259,3046,1053,1975],"class_list":{"0":"post-48941","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-activist","9":"tag-award","10":"tag-free","11":"tag-germany","12":"tag-hong","13":"tag-jailed","14":"tag-jimmy","15":"tag-kong","16":"tag-lai","17":"tag-prodemocracy","18":"tag-speech","19":"tag-wins"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/48942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}