Jimmy Lai “looks for Christ’s hands nailed to the cross, not the closed fist that symbolizes communism,” daughter tells ACN
President Trump said that he will discuss the case of Catholic political prisoner Jimmy Lai when he meets the Chinese president on his visit to Beijing this week.
“Jimmy Lai – he caused lots of turmoil for China,” Trump told reporters May 11, the day before he took off for the US-China summit. “He tried to do the right thing. He wasn’t successful, went to jail, and people would like him out, and I’d like to see him get out too.”
On the latest installment of the ACN podcast Faith Under Siege, Lai’s daughter, Claire Lai, discusses her father’s case – and his faith.
“The only thing that saves him is his faith,” Claire Lai says of her father. “He answers all anxiety with a very deep faith in our Lord. He looks for our Savior’s hands nailed to the cross, in contrast to the closed fist that symbolizes communism.”
Lai was a poor refugee from South China when he landed in Hong Kong just a few years after the communist takeover. He went on to successful careers in the clothing and media industries. He is considered one of the main contributors to Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement.
Lai was arrested in 2020 under a new national security law, and his daily newspaper “Apple Daily” was shuttered under pressure from the Chinese government. Ultimately, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. The 78-year-old remains in solitary confinement.
“Sanctity of the Individual”
It was in the years leading up to the 1997 British handover of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China that Lai became a Catholic, Claire Lai says in the podcast. Claire and a brother, Sebastien, were born around that time.
“He realized when he was converting to Catholicism that the only thing that can conquer fear and doubt is God’s love, and he took that up to this day,” she tells Faith Under Siege host Robert Royal.
“We were brought up to believe in the sanctity of the individual,” Claire Lai recalls of her childhood in Hong Kong. Her father “believed that giving information to people was a way to allow them to exercise their agency and that’s how you come into freedom. That’s basically what the sentence is about.”
Lai speaks in the podcast of prison guards’ maltreatment of her father, including enticing the devout Catholic with food on Fridays, when he tries to fast.
And yet, she says, “he feels extremely blessed to be a witness to the faith.”
As Trump prepared to depart for China, he said he also would bring up the case of an imprisoned Protestant pastor, Jin Mingri, who was arrested last year after new rules banned unauthorized online preaching or religious training by clergy, as well as “foreign collusion.”
“Faith Under Siege” features the stories and heartbreaking situations of Christians who are suffering for their faith around the world. Robert Royal is special advisor to the board of Aid to the Church in Need-USA on the matter of Christian persecution. Previous episodes can be found here.
–John Burger
