Jimmy Lai: Hong Kong media tycoon receives further 13-month jail sentence

By Didi Tang, Beijing
13 December 2021

A Hong Kong media tycoon was sentenced to 13 months in prison today for his role in a vigil for victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

Jimmy Lai, 74, attended the event in Victoria Park in the city in June last year and lit candles for the dead. He was convicted last week for inciting and taking part in an unlawful assembly.

“If commemorating those who died because of injustice is a crime, then inflict on me that crime and let me suffer the punishment … so I may share the burden and glory of those young men and women who shed their blood on 4 June [1989]” Lai wrote in a mitigation letter read out by his lawyer ahead of sentencing.

The jail sentence marks the latest effort by Beijing to erase public memory of its bloody crackdown on the students’ movement and silence dissent in Hong Kong in the wake of the mass protests in 2019.

Lai is already serving 20 months in prison on three illegal assembly convictions for his role in those protests. He will serve the new 13-month sentence concurrently.

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