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Canada joins peers in condemning China's conviction of Hong Kong publisher Jimmy Lai

  • Dylan Robertson

  • Canadian Press

  • February 9, 2026

FILE -- Jimmy Lai walks to go for exercise at the Stanley prison in Hong Kong, Friday, Aug. 4, 2023. On Friday, Aug. 18, 2023, Hong Kong judges proposed a new delay in the trial of a prominent activist publisher who was arrested in August 2020 under a sweeping Beijing-imposed national security law. Jimmy Lai, the 75-year-old founder of the now-defunct pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, faces up to life in prison if convicted under the law. (AP Photo/Louise Delmotte, Fie)

OTTAWA -- Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand is calling on China to release Hong Kong publisher Jimmy Lai after he was sentenced to 20 years in jail today under a sweeping national security law.

Canada joins numerous peers, including the United States and the European Union, in condemning Beijing for the sentence imposed under a law used to crack down on Hong Kong's leading democracy activists.

Lai is a British and Chinese citizen who founded a newspaper critical of the Hong Kong and Chinese governments.

He was convicted on charges of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and conspiring with others to publish seditious articles.

Anand says Canada is "disappointed" by the sentence and is calling for the "immediate humanitarian release" of Lai, whom she notes is in poor health.

China has dismissed pro-democracy protests as western-fuelled riots meant to destabilize Beijing and has accused Lai of trying to incite hatred and "poison" residents of the territory, which had a free press when it was a British colony.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 9, 2026.

-- With files from The Associated Press