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Jimmy Lai’s Trial Marks the Death of Freedom in Hong Kong

by Kwai Lou
19 December 2023 3:00 PM

Jimmy Lai is in West Kowloon Court today. The now defunct Daily Apple founder, aged 76, is charged with “colluding with foreign forces”. He is a British and Hong Kong citizen.

This is a concern to all readers because it is about China’s imposition of Beijing rules on Hong Kong in breach of treaty obligations.

Many will know that when Hong Kong was handed over to China in 1997 China struck a treaty with Britain to allow Hong Kong to operate with a very high degree of independence for at least 50 years.

This was well summarised as ‘One country, two systems’. The only other treaty signatory was the U.K. and so a breach of the treaty is a breach of trust with the U.K. as well as Hong Kong. Protests in Hong Kong in 2019 led to the biggest pro-democracy vote ever seen in local elections in November 2019. A record turnout, too, in what was effectively a referendum.

Stung by this, and helped by Covid restrictions barely three months later, Beijing clamped down on Hong Kong. This was by using the ‘National Security Law’, a set of rules so wide ranging as to allow Hong Kongers to be ‘transferred’ to the mainland for trial, removing rights to representation and preventing ‘non-patriotic’ candidates from standing in elections. The effects were crushing – protests were throttled, arrests made (including that of 90 year-old retired Roman Catholic Archbishop Cardinal Zen for subversion), 7% of Hong Kong’s population moved overseas (that’s equivalent to five million people leaving the U.K.) All this took place during Covid, butCcovid was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The heavy load already there was the National Security Law.

Fast forward to last weekend and the latest local elections. The number of councillors to be elected reduced from 452 to 88, the rest to be ‘selected’. And candidates had to be pre-approved as ‘patriots’. This leads to another record turnout. A record low turnout of 27% compared to 71% in 2019.

Fast forward again to this morning and West Kowloon court. 1,000 police are on duty. Why? Fear of large scale protests? Hardly. It is a show of strength.

Jimmy Lai arrives from prison, where he has been awaiting trial since 2020. A well known entrepreneur who made money from the Giordano retail fashion chain, he was disliked by Beijing because of his ownership and editorship of the Cantonese language Daily Apple. Something of a rag of a newspaper to be honest, it was nonetheless (like many rags!) the most popular in Hong Kong in any language. Editorially firmly pro-democracy, this proved Lai’s downfall.

The National Security Law was introduced in June 2020. Covid meant it avoided the attention it may have got otherwise. By December 2020 Lai had been arrested on various accounting irregularities and by June 2021 the Daily Apple was gone after police raids and the arrest of senior employees. The last print run was a record. Hongkongers have interesting ways of showing dissent.

Lai’s three years in prison anticipating trial has been spent by legal challenges on his behalf. He is allowed U.K. legal representation under the treaty but this has been refused. The trial judges have been selected by Hong Kong’s Chief Executive (i.e., First Minister), John Lee. When the Daily Apple was criticising the police for their role in the 2019 protests the Security Minister was – John Lee. There is no jury because the Justice Minister had ‘concerns’.

Additional charges have also been laid against Lai. The serious charge of “collusion with foreign powers” carries a sentence of life imprisonment.

Lai arrived in a prison van. It passed an anti-riot vehicle positioned close to the queue for the public to view the trial. Places are very limited, to about 70. Maybe 100 were queueing. They didn’t all get in.

There is significant press interest in a case expected to last some 11 weeks, and noticeable were consular representatives from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Switzerland, the EU as well as the U.K.

David Cameron met Lai’s son last week to show support. Embarrassingly, one of the charges against Lai is brought under old British Colonial law. This was pointed out forcefully by Beijing.

Your correspondent’s prediction of the outcome of the trial? Lai will be found guilty of most – but not all – charges. And the court will show leniency out of respect for Lai’s age. This will supposedly show that evidence matters and that Beijing is not predatory. Oh, and I wasn’t allowed to take photos because I wasn’t wearing press accreditation.

Kwai Lou is the pseudonym of a writer based in Hong Kong.

Tags: AuthoritarianismBeijingChinaDemocracyFree SpeechHong Kong

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28 Comments
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John
John
3 years ago

”Description of the frequency of side-effects
Very common greater than 1 in 10
Common 1 in 100 to 1 in 10
Uncommon [formerly ‘less commonly’ in BNF publications] 1 in 1000 to 1 in 100

Rare in 10 000 to 1 in 1000
Very rare less than 1 in 10 000
Frequency not known frequency is not defined by product literature or the side-effect has been reported from post-marketing surveillance data” my emphasis
This is from the BNF, the bible of prescribing.
https://bnf.nice.org.uk/medicines-guidance/adverse-reactions-to-drugs/

From the same publication:
“Newer drugs and vaccinesOnly limited information is available from clinical trials on the safety of new medicines. Further understanding about the safety of medicines depends on the availability of information from routine clinical practice.
The black triangle symbol identifies newly licensed medicines that require additional monitoring by the European Medicines Agency. Such medicines include new active substances, biosimilar medicines, and medicines that the European Medicines Agency consider require additional monitoring. The black triangle symbol also appears in the Patient Information Leaflets for relevant medicines, with a brief explanation of what it means. Products usually retain a black triangle for 5 years, but this can be extended if required.
Spontaneous reporting is particularly valuable for recognising possible new hazards rapidly. For medicines showing the black triangle symbol, the MHRA asks that allsuspected reactions (including those considered not to be serious) are reported through the Yellow Card Scheme. An adverse reaction should be reported even if it is not certain that the drug has caused it, or if the reaction is well recognised, or if other drugs have been given at the same time.” My emphasis added.

It’s all very well having a means of reporting adverse events but even if they were collated together, there’s a significant amount of background data that would be required for each adverse event. The adverse events would have to be stratified into life threatening, very serious, serious, minor or something similar. The medical history would be required and other medication taken.
Interestingly there is a section in the BNF that includes drug interactions, not sure where that information is sourced.

Last edited 3 years ago by John
27
0
RW
RW
3 years ago

Considering that the MHRA’s self-stated mission is Being an enabler, that is, help pharmaceutical companies to sell new stuff despite adverse regulations seeking to make that needlessly difficult, that’s not exactly surprising. The only required property for medical products (of any kind) to enable them to be sold in the UK is Doesn’t kill so many people on the spot that denying causality starts to become difficult.

UK public health officials aren’t specifically seeking to kill people – after all, dead people don’t buy face coverings (requiring mandatory headstone coverings for safety from post-mortem infections would be an idea, though) – but if this or that Joe Nobody or Jane Wedontmiss happen to die while the good cause is being achieved, that’s – unfortunately – unavoidable. Neither Sir Patrick nor Sir Chris nor Dame June are going to loose any sleep over that. Getting knighted means getting righted.

Last edited 3 years ago by RW
56
0
JohnK
JohnK
3 years ago

Since you mention other industries that deal with safety issues, as a retired engineer that has worked in the transport field, I also find it weird that the pharmaceutical trade appear to operate on a foreign land. They do not appear to make use of the concept of “safety integrity level”, e.g. These two standards, IEC 61508 and IEC 61511 would appear to be relevant. Maybe they follow them when manufacturing their products, but who knows?

All we get are the blatant lies using the terms like “safe and effective”, with no real evidence to make a wise judgement as to the validity of this or that.

43
0
Mad Vlad
Mad Vlad
3 years ago

The MHRA’s safety policy is based on a very old and trusted methodology – that of human sacrifice. This methodology goes right back to the Aztecs, where it was found to be highly effective in ensuring that the sun rose the next day. For those unfamiliar with it, in simple terms, it means you sacrifice a certain number of innocent victims every day to maintain the status quo (in this case the status quo being soaring profits for Big Pharma, knighthoods and damehoods al! round for the health professionals, and a subjugated and cowering general population). I hope that provides some reassurance.

80
0
RW
RW
3 years ago
Reply to  Mad Vlad

Adding a few technical points: Innocent victims is not quite correct. Those who were sacrificed were captives made during some war. Because of this, the primary (or at least most important secondary) business of all of the male Aztec population was to make war one someone to capture more people to sacrifice. This was done in form of an elaborate public procedure during which the captives would basically be skinned alive piece by piece until they died from that. Thank God these noble stone age savages weren’t white. They could have come up with something hideously cruel and useless instead which would have been a constant, mortal danger to anyone within reach!

13
-3
TheGreenAcres
TheGreenAcres
3 years ago

Good article from someone who knows his stuff. Keep digging, and good luck!

56
0
sophie123
sophie123
3 years ago

Basically June Raine is criminally negligent. I hope all those injured pursue her for damages, personally. She needs to live out the rest of her years in a bad prison, sharing a cell with cockroaches and eating cat food.

85
-2
BurlingtonBertie
BurlingtonBertie
3 years ago
Reply to  sophie123

Cat food is too good for her.
Eating the roaches would be more appropriate.
Or an oubliette….

Last edited 3 years ago by BurlingtonBertie
31
-1
RW
RW
3 years ago
Reply to  sophie123

As far as I know, her organization is a bit similar to the USPTO (US Patent & Trade Office) in that it’s either completely or at least to a large degree funded by application fees paid by prospective drug sellers. As everywhere, he who pays the piper, calls the tune. That’s an nice example of small-stateism badly backfiring: A regulator supposed to operate in the interest of the public must be independent from both government and the industry it’s supposed to regulate. Raine isn’t negligent. Her income depends (at least partly) on pharmaceutical companies developing new drugs for sale. Without actually being able to sell them in the general case, nobody would (keep) invest(ing) money into this.

She obviously also isn’t overly troubled by something resembling a conscience. But for a career in either politics or the civil service, that’s pretty much a requirement.

Last edited 3 years ago by RW
30
0
sophie123
sophie123
3 years ago
Reply to  RW

She is responsible for their safety. She can accept payment and remain a safety watchdog. Like when you pay to sit your driving test – you do have to pass requirements or you will fail. Knowing you may fail doesn’t mean you don’t bother to learn to drive (unless you are especially shit and haven’t a chance in hell).

10
-1
RW
RW
3 years ago
Reply to  sophie123

Driving tests are designed such that the vast majority of people will pass despite they lack both the intellectual maturity and the technical prowess necessary for unsupervised operation of such potentially deadly machines as cars happen to be. But that’s an aside.

The MHRA gets a large amount of its funding from the pharmaceutical industry. Hence, it works in the interest of the pharmaceutical industry (that’s the enabler bit). That’s the invariable outcome of such a built-in conflict of interest.

16
0
EppingBlogger
EppingBlogger
3 years ago
Reply to  sophie123

I have little doubt she has an unlimited indemnity from HMG, of the sort school governors do not get.

5
0
MikeAustin
MikeAustin
3 years ago

A pantomime dame if ever there was.As Groucho Marx might say, “She should be on the stage. There’s one leaving in half an hour.”

23
0
Sforzesca
Sforzesca
3 years ago

I’m shocked.
Never for a moment did I ever think something like this would ever happen.
For those who may be a little naive, did you ever actually think that the job of the MHRA was to find any fault whatsoever with the continuous miracle drugs produced by big pharma ?
Look at this and weep you utter bastards :-

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027869152200206X

17
-1
EppingBlogger
EppingBlogger
3 years ago

So what is the point of a regulator that cannot regulate?

21
0
Lancer
Lancer
3 years ago
Reply to  EppingBlogger

Perhaps it’s from being naive but I honestly thought the MHRA was a regulator for public safety, but it appears it’s nothing of the sort. They’re keen to promote their pharmacovigilance so if they are doing safety checks re: cvd vaccines, why aren’t these analysis in the public domain? The most egregious aspect of all of this is this impression that they’re there to regulate medicine safety (simply omit “safety” and I guess it’s accurate?). If you were to ask anyone on the street the purpose of the MHRA I’m sure they’d all say “to regulated the safety of medicines for the public”, not function to regulate the enabling of the pharmaceutical sector. If this is accurate it’s quite the revelation.

8
0
Gefion
Gefion
3 years ago

Fascinating and dispiriting. Well done for the article and the research and good luck with the FOI investigations.

7
0
marebobowl
marebobowl
3 years ago

Thank you for your efforts. Like Steve Kirsch in the USA, these organisations must be held to account. Few of us want to tackle that job. But is is so important because chipping away at these organisations eventually leads to findings which are less than satisfactory. Negligence is the word that comes to mind. Whoever thought of the MHRA as a negligent organisation, but there it is. The chipping away appears to show this may be exactly what is happening within the MHRA, the FDA, the CDC, the NIH. Hope the public is listening.

1
0
SimCS
SimCS
3 years ago

If they ‘had no process to follow up yellow card events’ then they should not have provided EUA for the vaccines. It’s as simple as that.

2
0
Butties
Butties
3 years ago

Thank you Nick Denim. Please keep digging.

Meanwhile Reiner Fuellmich opens the Grand Jury case in the Hague.
This link takes you to 18mins of summary.

https://rumble.com/v1ecssx-from-the-hague.-international-trials-day-one-crimes-against-humanity.html

Well worth a listen/watch.

3
0

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