 See the cover story and featured interview on Jimmy Lai in GODSPEED Magazine's August edition which released just prior to his arrest. The arrest was obviously designed to humiliate him among his employees. Here was Jimmy Lai, in a pale blue suit, his hands cuffed behind his back, a policeman’s hand menacingly on his shoulder, being paraded through the offices of his newspaper as though he were a serial rapist about to make a run for it. In fact China’s Communist authorities wanted to make it absolutely clear that press freedom, and indeed all common law civic freedom, was being snuffed out by the recent imposition of China’s new national security law. In his last interview with Godspeed Magazine, on July 3 of this year, Jimmy warned that the implementation of a new national security law for Hong Kong by the Chinese communist party would bring to an end Hong Kong’s rule of law, which was supposed to last for 50 years after the China takeover of the former British colony in 1997. “Hong Kong will be just like China,” he warned, “riddled with with corruption. Our international financial status will be just destroyed. People who do business here will not have the protection of law so what they will have to do is to bribe officials who have power over them. Without the rule of law and without the mutual trust which the rule of law provides, business cannot be safely done. At the same time, People will be frightened into changing the way they relate to each other. The culture will totally change. I have to prepare to go to prison at any time. It is all intangible.”  Before his arrest, Jimmy had planned to attend court appearances during August 25-27. During his Godspeed interview he had approved of the idea of planning for a possible conference on freedom of worship in Hong Kong during the year 2021.
But in the Godspeed interview, Jimmy was wary of even suggesting what any country should do to censure China because it would probably be considered breaking the new law itself. Another brave Christian has gone to jail for standing up to tyranny. Pray for Jimmy Lai. by David Aikman, editor in chief GODSPEED Magazine |
