For Sebastien Lai and...
for Everyone Who Believes in Freedom. For the press. For speech. For the people. For artists, filmmakers, and truth-tellers everywhere.
A Correction, and a Deeper Reckoning
Yesterday, I wrote quickly, fueled by emotion and urgency. But I made a mistake.
In my post, I said that Jimmy Lai had been under house arrest for years.
I shared the piece with my friend Sebastien Lai, Jimmy’s son who I saw most recently at the Copenhagen Democracy Summit where he accepted an award for his tireless advocacy. He told me the piece was good. And then he gently corrected me:
“My father is not under house arrest. He’s in a maximum security prison.”
My heart sank.
I felt ill.
I knew that, but I’m not living with it every day like Sebastien is.
I’m not trying to get my father out of prison.
Sebastien is.
I want to acknowledge that mistake and say clearly: Jimmy Lai has spent nearly 1,700 days in solitary confinement in one of the most extreme penal systems in the world, not for a violent act, not for corruption, but for publishing a newspaper. For telling the truth.
This post is for Sebastien. And for Jimmy.
It’s also to honor the powerful work of my friend Benedict Rogers, who I met at the Oslo Freedom Forum last year during a breakfast on transnational repression. When INVISIBLE NATION screened at the Oslo Freedom Forum it garnered one of the best attended, most engaged audiences in their history and I made friends with people like Benedict and Sebastien.
Benedict later attended my talk on INVISIBLE NATION at the UK House of Lords, hosted by Lord Alton and Baroness D’Souza and our partners at Think-Film Impact. Benedict’s voice is one of the clearest we have on Hong Kong, and he’s been tireless in his fight for Jimmy Lai’s freedom.
His recent op-ed, published on the fourth anniversary of Apple Daily’s shutdown, captures the gravity of the moment.
⸻
The Day the Printing Press Went Dark
(Selections from Benedict Rogers’ June 24 op-ed, UCA News)
“When the lights were switched off in the Tseung Kwan O building, they were turned off not only for the newspaper founded by media entrepreneur and pro-democracy campaigner Jimmy Lai, but for media freedom itself in Hong Kong.”
On June 24, 2021, Hong Kong lost Apple Daily.
The night before its last edition, thousands lined the streets. Supporters held up lights. Journalists and editors stood on balconies and flashed theirs back. It was a farewell, but it was also a resistance ritual. A promise to remember.
Since then, most independent newsrooms in Hong Kong have gone dark.
Citizen News, Stand News, and others silenced.
Seven Apple Daily staff remain detained, facing life sentences.
Jimmy Lai has been imprisoned for more than four years.
“He is 77 years old and in poor health… His current trial, under the draconian National Security Law, has already lasted over 140 days… The risk that he will die in prison increases every day.”
Rogers writes that the silence from world leaders is inexcusable.
Jimmy Lai is a British citizen, a Catholic, and a man whose commitment to press freedom and civil courage should be universally recognized.
⸻
What Apple Daily Meant to the World
Benedict Rogers has long said what so many of us feel:
Jimmy Lai didn’t just build a newspaper. He built hope.
He built a space for truth, humor, accountability, and critique, all the ingredients of democracy. He knew the risks. He took them anyway.
His conviction is not just a Hong Kong story. It’s global. And it’s been particularly meaningful and significant for journalists and people in Taiwan.
It’s about whether a media empire with moral purpose can survive in a world increasingly ruled by fear and “stability.” It’s about whether artists, publishers, and cultural workers can still speak truth to power without being disappeared.
⸻
From Taiwan to Hong Kong: One Fight, Many Fronts
I wrote yesterday about three stories that reveal the power of democracy in the Chinese-speaking world:
• Wei-San Hsu, INVISIBLE NATION’s composer is now part of the Academy
• Hsiao Bi-khim, Taiwan’s Vice President, had been targeted in a Chinese military plot but survived
• Jimmy Lai, is enduring another birthday in maximum security
What unites these stories?
Authoritarianism hates visibility.
It fears women in power. It fears journalists in print. It fears culture that cannot be controlled. And it fears artists who keep going anyway.
⸻
End the Rivalry, Reclaim the Moral Imagination
I want to return to The Rivalry Peril by Van Jackson and Michael Brenes, a book that has become essential to me.
Their argument is clear:
The U.S.–China rivalry is not a solution. It is a slow-motion catastrophe.
It fuels nationalism on both sides. It turns dialogue into posturing. And it accelerates authoritarianism instead of restraining it.
We cannot defend democracy by mimicking the very logic that destroys it.
This is especially true for the increasing authoritarianism silencing truth in journalism and film from Washington to Silicon Valley to Hollywood.
We cannot save freedom abroad while letting it die in solitary confinement.
We must choose a different path: one of diplomacy, human rights, moral courage, and brave, truthful storytelling.
⸻
What You Can Do
• Watch Sebastien Lai’s talk: A 76-Year Quest for Freedom
• Share Benedict Rogers’ op-ed
• Demand that the UK, the Vatican, the U.S., and other world leaders act to #FreeJimmyLai
• Host a screening of INVISIBLE NATION and dedicate it to press freedom
⸻
This Is for Sebastien
And for Jimmy.
And for everyone who has held up a phone light in the dark.
For every editor who kept printing.
For every son who’s trying to bring his father home.
xoVanessa