So fifteen to twenty police officers rocked up at our house around five six am. They knocked, OneD or went in, checked my father in cuffs and the proceededs had take him to his offices the Apple Daily officers where two hundred police officers were there who had readed the Apple Daily officer as well, and preaded him around like he was some criminal in cuffs.
This is Sebastian Lie. And one morning in twenty twenty he woke up to see missed phone calls filling his phone. His dad, Jimmy Laie, had just been arrested. Jimmy is a well known newspaper tycoony in Hong Kong. His newspaper, Apple Daily, was the most popular newspaper in Hong Kong, read by over nine million people every month. Was also known for a strong stance on political freedoms. So when the Chinese government cracked down on pro democracy protesters, Apple Daily was the top target.
And you know our journalists who were incredibly brave, many of them live streamed it, and when they were taught to stop, some of the female journalists went to the bathroom and actually kept live updating it from their bathroom.
Apple Daily live streamed the raid from its roof as hundreds of police rifled through the newsroom a few floors below. In all, five executives, including three editors, were arrested.
The people of Hong Kong lined up to buy Apple Daily the next day, and there's this incredibly moving story where one of the people in the queue was interviewed and he was asked, you know now that Apple Daily has essentially been made illegal, are you still going to buy it? And he turns around and he says, I'll buy it even if it was white piece of paper.
From Chauce Media don Rick Morton, and this is seven am. Sebastian Lai has taken up the cause of convincing political leaders to fight for his father's release from a Hong Kong prison. He's now in Australia trying to persuade our parliament to use whatever power it has to convince China. Today, Sebastian tells the story of his father, Jimmy, and how he went from media tycoon to political prisoner. That's coming
up after the break. Tell me about your dad, because Jimmy is central to your story obviously, but also to the democratic in Hong Kong. Tell me about his last story. How did he end up in Hong Kong in the first place.
So it's quite a beautiful story. He was born in mainland China a few years before the Communists came, and when they came, his father left and his mum was put in a re educational camp. So he was really the man in the family at a very young age, you know, five six years old and yet to take care of his siblings. And so he eventually went to work at a train station when he was nine or ten years old. You know how people carry luggages, and one day this very well dressed man turned around and
gave him a half easting bar of chocolate. Now he had never seen chocolate before, known of it at all, but he was very hungry. So he turns around and eats it, and for him it was a religious experienced event. And actually he chases after man and says, excuse me, where are you from? And then man turns around and says, one from Hong Kong. And so Dad thinks to himself, well, if chuckol this from Hong Kong, then Hong Kong must
be heaven and I will go there one day. So, you know, he keeps his promise to himself, and at twelve, he managers to smuggle Hong Kong and the first day he arrives, he starts working in a glove factory. But he's always told me that even though he had nothing at that point, even maybe less than nothing, because he owed money to the smugglers, he felt like he was in heaven because he finally had a future, and he
worked his way up from the glove factory. Eventually he goes to start his own textile manufacturer.
In the history of communist China, there has never been anything like this.
Eventually, though, in nineteen eighty nine, there are protests happening all across China.
In the dead of night, two thousand students marched through the streets of Beijing calling for democracy, human rights, and the resignation of the Chinese government.
But obviously, as we now know with the hindsight of history, the Tenant Square massacre happened, and that was heartbreaking for him and many people actually, and for Dad, it was his political awakening. He realized that that he needed to do something to defend the freedoms of Hong Kong, as Hong Kong was going to be handed over to the Chinese in nineteen ninety seven by the British, and so
he found the Next Magazine and then Apple Daily. You know, with the idea that a lot of newspapers had to rely started self censoring, that Apple Daily wasn't going to self censor.
Jimmy Lai resigned from the board of Giordano, but two years before the handover, he was on the offensive again, this time with the Apple Daily crime, gossip and scandal plus a crusade for freedom and democracy.
It was going to speak truth to power and have a very pro democracy editorial.
Hong Kong is our home. Hong Kong's where we want to protect the freedom. I don't give a shit what happened in China. This is my home.
And that's what it was for the next thirty years.
What are you trying to say with this headline, Well, just saying, and it's very praying.
You know, we don't want to be slave, you know, we want to have the freedom we want to have.
And it also became the most popular newspaper in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and so you know, he's faced multiple harassment throughout the years, including fire bombs people following him death threats. You know, in Taiwan, for example, someone skinned a dog and pin the the Todds or because obviously, not only did he offend the Chinese Communist Party, he also wasn't afraid to offend triads and mobsters and whatnot. So a whole colorful bunch of people.
And you know, given everything that you went through as a kid, watching you know, people fight back against your father, I mean you say it like it's a normal thing, right to have a dog skinned and attached to the door. What was that like watching that? Did it feel normal to you at the time? What did you even know as a kid that this was not right?
So obviously I knew that it was a very unique experience, you know, because we had people following us twenty four to seven, essentially cass parked outside and people taking a picture of us as soon as we went back home. But I never felt like I had a bad or a normal childhood because Dad never put it home. You know, even though people would try to scare him and intimidate him,
My father was never scared or intimidated. He actually had always had a very good line about the cheapest weapon that an autocratic regime has on you is fear, because once they know that you're scared, they could call you, and once they call you, they could always call you. So he never felt scared and he was never count He didn't act out of self preservation. He acted because he knew that the Company for Democracy, for free speech,
for Impressed was just the right thing to do. Eventually, though, having been a thorn in the government's side for so many years, they passed this National Security Law at the end of twenty twenties.
Beijing says it will bring stability to a city that was home to massive democracy protests. The law criminalizes acts of subversion, succession, collision with foreign forces, and terrorism. All can be punished by life in prison.
Critics, the National Security Law is actually criminalizes or dissent and all expressions of democracy. And under the guise of this law, they arrested my father, raided his newspapers, and arrested his colleagues, and he's been in jail since the end of twenty twenty so for more than three and a half years, and at seventy six, he now faces the possibility of life imprisonment.
After the break, Well's the best in Blaze Australia could be key to train his father.
It's really this case about, you know, a man who sacrificed everything he has to campaign for democracy.
Welcome back. Jimmy Lai has now been in prison in Hong Kong since December twenty twenty, arrested under the controversial new National Security Law and awaiting trial. These laws were passed in twenty nineteen to quell pro democracy protests spreading across Hong Kong, and for Sebastian, the charges his father is facing, well, they've done more than just put him in jail. They have even radically changed his home and what's it possible there.
They made a very deliberate decision to weaponize the Hong Kong legal system. So it's a textbook show trial. There's three government appointed judges, no jury. The Minister of Security essentially hints it at my father's guilty before the start of the trial, which is not how trials work. And so that's just targeting my father obviously. But what makes it especially heartbreaking and pernicious is that they arrested my father's colleagues who have been in prison for more than
two years now. They haven't been charged yet. They're getting charged at the end of my father's trial so that they could testify against my father. There's also been reports by the Washington Posts of torture of some of the people testifying against my father, the reports of them being tortured by the government in order to testify. So it's a very new tactic for Hong Kong. But it's something that photogratic regime have used. But how Hong Kong using it.
It's interesting because they're still trying to have this veneer of rule of law when obviously that is no longer the case. I mean, if you ask the Hong Kong government today, they'll still tell you that they have the free press. But if you google Apple Daily raids, you see five hundred running into a newsroom. And that's not the image of free press. No, no, it's not.
And of course I mean this is in some respects the world away from Australia, and in other respects it's really close to home. You're leading the campaign to have your father Fred, and no doubt to hope that sparks the domino effect of releasing his colleagues as well.
Hello, I know I come at a interesting time for Australia with relationships throwing in China. So my father's story to some is a uncomfortable and inconvenient one, but to some others, I hope is an enlightening one. Enlightening one.
What role do you hope that Australia can play to bring your dad's case to the attention of our government or to authorities that can have him released.
So you know, I'll be incredibly grateful if Australia joins the corps for his release. The US Court for is immediate and condition of release. The UK government has as well, so has both houses of the Canadian parliaments, and it's
European parliaments and multiple and special rappertoires. So there's an international cor for his release, and I hope it astraated to join that call, and it's by putting pressure on the Hong Kong government to do right by its people that we could see my father and other political prisoners
are released. Because look, the Hong Kong's a financial center, right If you're from Australia, UK, US and you're doing business there, you need to trust in the system for a financial center to function, and that trust is no longer there and so it's important for governments to highlight that and to put pressure on the Hong Kong government so that it returns to a place that has these freedoms.
But they can't say that they have these freedoms when they have a thousand and eight hundred political prisoners in jail because they supported democracy, which again is a view that most people from from the countries that I mentioned hold. It's a very foundation of Australia, US UK and one of these values that my father has has fought for. And you guys recently got the Chinese journalist changed layout and that makes me immensely hopeful. It's important to have
meaningful engagement with China. You know, China's one of the biggest conomies you have to trade with China. But you should never trade your freedom of speech with the dignity of your people.
In cases I mean, Jimmy Leis case is the most I think he's got one of the most inspiring stories in terms of a success story in Hong Kong, a successful businessman who stood up against and spoke truth to power, and he's being targeted for it, and I think it's.
I think it's correct to say that you're working with Jennifer Robinson now, who is just just being done for Juliana Science very casually. Yeah, like it's you know, or work before breakfast.
Yeah.
I want to make clear that that I ask of the Australian government is a very modest one. The British government, the US government, our allies have already called for his release.
They would be.
Doing what I hope do you have that, you know, working with Jennifer will be able to create at least some of the same conditions for your father's release.
Yeah, so we're working with Jennifer and so yeah, it's it's we're very hopeful. You know. I saw the picture of Julian on the tarmac with his with his wife and it really makes me miss my father a lot. And then then the end of the day that I see him again.
I was going to ask, just as we end, how your father is doing and he have you seen him?
So because I speak out on his behalf, I haven't been able to go by Hong Kong. I think there's a tremendous amount of strength in a person who knows that he's doing the right thing. But there's also you know, biology at his age seventy six. Now, I don't think anybody would have blamed him if he left Hong Kong, you know, before the crackdowns, but he didn't. Then he decided to stay, and I'm so incredibly proud of that that he stood, you know, by the side of his people,
by the side of his journals. So yeah, I think he knows he's doing the right thing, and I think that's giving him a lot of strength. But obviously, you know, given his age, I think that the situation, his health, situation could change very quickly, even though psychologically he remains incredibly strong.
Thank you so much, the best in life for joining us. I really appreciate you taking the time.
Thank you for having me.
Rick.
Also in the news today, the Federal Labor Caucus has unanimously voted in support of Anthony Albanesi's decision to suspend Senator Fatima Payman, according to reports from Tuesday's party room meeting, but whether she leaves the Labor Party or is permanently
expelled remains a question. Payman said in a statement later on Monday that she had been exiled, saying that she'd been cut off from the internal Labor Party conversations and would use the weeks ahead to think about how best to serve the people of Western Australia and budget airline bondser will be liquidated, with workers owed to some ten
point eight million dollars in wages and entitlements. Administrators had been hopeful of securing a rescue deal with a buyer, but the sudden repossession of its entire fleet of aircraft in May left little value for any prospective buyer. And Rick Morton this is of an n ame See tomorrow
HM