Hong Kong tycoon Jimmy Lai asked top Apple Daily executive to devise ways to encourage people to protest 2019 extradition bill, court hears
- Former associate publisher Chan Pui-man says Lai asked her to interview ‘heavyweights’ to discuss issues with now-scrapped extradition bill
- Cartoon portraying bill as ‘evil law’ was printed to encourage people to take to streets in 2019, Chan says
Chan Pui-man, a former associate publisher of the now-closed newspaper, on Tuesday said Lai called the situation “too quiet and too terrifying” two months after authorities proposed the bill.
She added Lai had asked her to interview “heavyweights” to discuss issues with the legislation, which could have allowed suspects to be transferred to mainland China for trial.
Chan, accused of conspiring to collude with foreign forces along with Lai, became a prosecution witness after she pleaded guilty to the national security charge in November 2022.
Lai, 76, is also facing one count of conspiring to publish seditious publications to incite hatred against authorities.
As the trial entered its 24th day on Tuesday, prosecutors presented Lai’s WhatsApp messages, Apple Daily’s articles, advertisements and publications from 2019, seeking to establish the media tycoon’s involvement in content positioned against the controversial bill proposed by the government in February that year.
Among them was a double-page cartoon featuring six Chinese characters saying “Against the evil law, down with Carrie Lam” above a handcuff labelled as “black jail” that was printed on the newspaper’s back page. Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor was the city’s leader at the time.
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It was published on April 28, 2019, when the Civil Human Rights Front organised a protest against the proposed bill for the first time. Tens of thousands of people joined the march, with participants seen holding the cartoon.
Chan said printing the drawing by cartoonist Zunzi for that march was “exceptional” because the newspaper published full-page posters on the July 1 protest only, referring to an annual rally on the anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.
“Whose idea was it?” Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions Ivan Cheung Cheuk-kan asked.
“I’m not sure. Perhaps all of us found that Mr Lai placed great importance on the resistance. We, therefore, printed the cartoon,” Chan testified at West Kowloon Court.
The court also revealed that a day before the protest, Lai messaged Chan on WhatsApp, saying: “Pui-man, please think what else we can do to encourage the public to take to the streets tomorrow. The situation at the moment is too quiet and too terrifying.”
The tycoon on May 30, 2019 forwarded a message to Chan from former Apple Daily publisher Tung Chiao that read: “If your newspaper publishes views of heavyweights about the extradition bill on a daily basis, the turnout on June 9 will be high.”
“What we are advocating is not democracy for Hong Kong. What we are advocating is that Hong Kong’s values must not be destroyed by the Chinese Communist Party.”
Lai subsequently urged Chan to follow up with the suggestion by asking “heavyweights to give their views on the problems with the bill”, the court heard.
Apple Daily series reflected Lai’s views on Hong Kong national security law: court
More than 1 million people took to the streets during the June 9 march to protest the bill, according to the rally’s organiser. Days after the march, city leader Lam announced she was shelving the bill, citing polarised opinions.
On June 14, the court heard that Lai messaged Chan again, saying there was a need to “gradually up our game to meet the arrival of the sly scheme” as he believed that the bill could be revived after China-US talks at the G20 summit in 2019.
Prosecutors also presented a booklet titled “Adversarial June” distributed alongside the daily on July 1, 2019. She said it was a photo collection of two large-scale extradition bill protests that took place in June.
“Such a title was adopted to describe the opposition against the government’s measures in a comprehensive and literary manner,” she said.
The trial continues on Wednesday.
