On 15 December, Hong Kong pro-democracy campaigner, writer and media tycoon Jimmy Lai was found guilty on two charges of conspiring to collude with foreign forces under Beijing’s authoritarian National Security Law (NSL). He was also convicted of publishing seditious material in Apple Daily, the newspaper he founded, under a separate colonial-era law. In poor health, Lai, seventy-eight, now faces spending the rest of his life in prison. The court opened the sentencing hearing on 12 January 2026, but has not announced the final date.

China imposed the controversial NSL on Hong Kong in 2020, following the pro-democracy protests that had swept through the region the previous year. The law targets secession, subversion, terrorism and foreign collusion, and criminalises dissent and opposition under vague definitions of ‘national security’. According to PEN, its enactment has had a ‘chilling effect’ on freedom of expression in the territory, resulting in the ‘systematic removal of politically sensitive books from public libraries, the closure of independent newspapers and bookshops, and widespread self-censorship’.

Lai, who was born in mainland China in 1947, fled to Hong Kong when he was twelve. Following the brutal suppression of the 1989 student-led protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, he became a human-rights activist. He wrote articles condemning the massacre, set up what would become one of Hong Kong’s