The United States has condemned a Hong Kong court decision to sentence pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai to prison, a move that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime has characterized as an attempt to “whitewash criminals.”
U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price on Sunday urged Chinese authorities “to respect freedom of expression, including for the press, in Hong Kong” following the “unjust” outcome of Lai’s trial over lease fraud regarding his businesses.
Lai was accused of using his media organization to conceal the operations of a consultancy firm based at the headquarters of his now-defunct liberal newspaper Apple Daily. The lease terms stipulated that the premises could only be used for printing and publishing….