Labour MPs urge Rachel Reeves to demand Jimmy Lai’s release
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UK chancellor will be first to make an official visit to China in a decade. Labour MPs have urged Rachel Reeves to demand Jimmy Lai’s release when she becomes the first UK chancellor to make an official visit to China in nearly a decade. Nine Labour MPs have joined a cross-party call for Reeves to raise the detention of political prisoners in Hong Kong and ask for Lai’s “immediate and unconditional release”, during her visit to China this weekend.
Lai, a British citizen who founded the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, is accused of conspiracy to commit foreign collusion in Hong Kong’s most high-profile national security trial. He has been in jail since December 2020 and turned 77 in solitary confinement last month. Keir Starmer raised concerns about Lai’s health when he met Xi Jinping in November.
The letter, which was coordinated by the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (Ipac), said Lai’s trial was “emblematic of the destruction of Hong Kong’s freedoms and the impunity with which Beijing believes it can now behave”. Signatories included the newly elected Labour MPs Alex Barros-Curtis, who is Labour’s former executive director of legal affairs, Blair McDougall, Phil Brickell, Connor Rand and James Naish. Several of these MPs have joined Ipac, which campaigns for a tougher stance towards Beijing.
A government official said Reeves intended to raise Lai’s case. The Treasury said the chancellor, during her two-day visit, would express concerns about Hong Kong – whose police have issued warrants for pro-democracy activists living in the UK – and China’s support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
