The family of Jimmy Lai, the jailed Hong Kong media mogul, has expressed fresh concern over his deteriorating health, describing dramatic weight loss, rotting teeth, and nails turning green before falling off. Lai, who turns 78 next Monday, has been held in solitary confinement since late 2020 amid China's crackdown on the financial hub.
According to his daughter Claire Lai, the diabetic prisoner has been kept without air conditioning in a jail where summer temperatures reach 44C (111F). She said he has become visibly weaker and that guards have refused to let him receive communion as a Catholic, and have made petty gestures to demoralise him, such as withholding curry sauce.
Lai founded the pro-democracy tabloid Apple Daily and faces charges of foreign collusion related to the 2019 Hong Kong protests. He faces at least 15 years in prison, which his family describes as effectively a death sentence.
His son, Sebastien Lai, urged both US President Donald Trump and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer to raise his father's case with China, noting that Lai is a British national. "It will take two hours to put my father on a plane and send him away," he said. "It'll be the humane thing to do."
