Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai, 7 others get jail sentences ranging from 4½ to 14 months over banned Tiananmen Square vigil
- The 74-year-old Apple Daily founder, already behind bars, is sentenced to 13 months, while his co-defendants are jailed for up to 14 months each
- The group are the last of 24 to be sentenced for their roles in the 2020 candlelight vigil, which police banned for the first time in 30 years
District Judge Amanda Woodcock said the case called for a punitive and deterrent custodial sentence, given that the defendants had defied a police ban and the law, and “belittled” a genuine health crisis in a serious case of unauthorised assembly.
She also dismissed suggestions that the city’s social-distancing measures were tools of repression meant to prevent people from gathering, saying their sole aim was to protect the community.
“So to defy and incite others to defy those restrictions under these circumstances is serious,” she said. “The defendants wrongly and arrogantly believed their right to commemorate was more important than a serious health risk.”
Rather than gathering in closed-off football pitches, where a major community outbreak would be possible, the defendants could have mitigated the risk by holding an interactive online vigil, she added.
In sentencing, Woodcock said she had considered the context of the case, the human rights involved and mitigation statements from the defendants, including a letter from Lai, but did not take into account their political stances or the common purpose of the assembly.