Hong Kong court begins Day 2 of activist publisher Jimmy Lai’s trial

By KANIS LEUNG
Associated Press

HONG KONG (AP) — The national security trial of Hong Kong’s famous activist publisher Jimmy Lai entered its second day with the expectation that judges will rule by the end of the week on his lawyers’ bid to throw out a sedition charge that has been increasingly used to target dissidents. Lai was arrested in August 2020 during a crackdown on the city’s pro-democracy movement following massive protests in 2019. He faces a possible life sentence if convicted under a national security law imposed by Beijing. His landmark trial is tied to the now-shuttered pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily that Lai founded. It’s widely seen as a trial for press freedom and a test for judicial independence in the former British colony, which returned to Chinese rule in 1997.