Media mogul Jimmy Lai appeals to UN over Hong Kong cases

HONG KONG (AP) — Lawyers for Hong Kong media mogul and pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai are asking the United Nations to investigate his imprisonment and multiple criminal charges as “legal harassment” that punish him for speaking out.

The publisher of the now-defunct Apple Daily newspaper was one of the most prominent activists arrested in Hong Kong's crackdown on virtually all political criticism since mass pro-democracy protests in 2019.

The crackdown continued early Monday with the arrest of another veteran journalist, Allan Au Ka-lun, a teaching consultant who'd worked for a number of Hong Kong media outlets.

The actions by Lai's lawyers in Britain followed that country's announcement last month it would withdraw its judges from Hong Kong’s top court because keeping them there would “legitimize oppression” in the former British colony.

Lai, 74, has been charged under Hong Kong's sweeping national security law and is serving 20 months in prison. His assets have been frozen and the raft of legal cases against him include four separate criminal prosecutions related to attending and joining various protests, his legal team at Doughty Street Chambers in the U.K. said in a statement.

Lai faces “the risk of spending the rest of his life in prison simply for speaking out, and for seeking to defend freedom of the press, democracy and the rule of law in Hong Kong," Lai's counsel, Caoilfhionn Gallagher, said in the statement.

In a follow-up email, Gallagher said the appeal had been filed with the U.N. special rapporteurs for freedom of opinion and expression, counter-terrorism and human rights, rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, and human rights defenders.

“We are awaiting a response," she wrote.

Lai's son, Sebastien Lai, was quoted as urging U.N....