This makes it no less heartbreaking.
At age 78, and worn down by the past six years in jail that he has endured for another “crime” against the Chinese Communist Party/State, he is not likely to live long enough to see freedom again in his own beloved city.
I have few words to add to what I have written before about Jimmy Lai, and about the Hong Kong Democracy Movement’s long, brave, and finally smothered protest against the tightening grip of the CCP. I worked for some time crafting this digital image that attempts to visualize (and in some way evoke the “tangible” dimension of) the suffering of the former-opposition-newspaper publisher in his prison cell.
This is what happens to human persons under regimes that grasp power for its own sake, or seek to justify the abuse of power for the sake of its alleged “efficiency.”
I don’t believe that this is the “end” of Hong Kong’s (or for that matter China’s) struggle for freedom and human dignity. The events of the past decade — like those at Tiananmen Square in 1989 — can be erased from the official story of the CCP. But the Chinese people have long memories. We can only hope that these events are seeds of the new directions that China will discover and take up in the future.
Remember Jimmy Lai and pray for him.
