Know the Name of Jimmy Lai

Taped on the wall by my desk is a photo of Jimmy Lai in handcuffs. It was taken a week ago, the day 200 Hong Kong police raided his Apple Daily newspaper and arrested him. It is my most treasured photo of Jimmy, who also happens to be my godson, having been baptized in 1997 just before the handover of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty. The point is that though the handcuffs were intended to humiliate him, every man, woman, and child in Hong Kong saw them for what they were: a badge of honor.

W all Street Journal columnist William McGurn wrote the above comments in the summer of 2020. If you don’t know about Jimmy Lai, you need to. He is one of the heroes of our time. His name should be known the same way we know the names Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. We know of John Paul II not just because he was pope. He knew that the greatest freedom was to live the life God called you to, and that government has no business stifling that. The Chinese Communist government is terrified of people truly encountering God and having a real sense of a mission for their lives, a meaning beyond what the Chinese government assigns. That’s why the Communist authorities insist that even Catholics must operate under a patriotic association, adhering to the Chinese Communist Party’s rules, not the Church’s. (That the Holy See goes along and allows Cardinal Joseph Zen to be an outcast is a mystery to me and a grave sadness.) Faith makes the Chinese government vulnerable, Lai has said.

In a video that first debuted at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in September and that was featured this fall at the Anglosphere Society conference Act in Time: Beijing’s Long Arm, Lai said:

The CCP is very afraid of organization. Because if you have a faith, you can easily organize together and oppose them, because for a religion, which is the foundation of morality and values, which the CCP does not have — this is where they are most vulnerable. You know Chinese people are looking for a faith, in addition to their life, material life. The greater material success they have, the more welcome and warm they feel in their hearts, and the more they want religion, the more they want virtue and morals to live a meaningful life.

Lai remains in prison. His friends fear he will die in prison, a political prisoner for simply speaking the truth and daring to defend the Chinese people and oppose the government. “Our instinct urges us to stand up to injustice and evil,” Jimmy Lai has said, as a Catholic convert. When he was first arrested, he was kept in the busiest police station in Hong Kong, trying to sleep on the floor. He asked himself: If he knew he would be permanently sleeping on the floor in prison, would he have kept silent? No. His godfather McGurn testified: “He is where he is today because he chose handcuffs and arrest rather than run away or abandon his convictions. All Hong Kong knows this. They also know that if even a billionaire isn’t safe, no one is.”

To hear Bill McGurn talk about Lai is a humbling and inspiring experience. We have challenges in our lives and in our nation. They are nothing compared with what’s faced by the people living under Communist China. This is critical to bear in mind as the world looks to China as host of the Olympics — the ultimate in propaganda tools handed to them by the International Olympic Committee. It is a disgrace that this is happening. There are greater goods — there’s more at stake — than victory for the athletes who have been training their whole lives for these games.

“Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” Lord David Alton, at the Act in Time conference, quoted Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who at the time was talking about the Nazi threat. “This is the challenge to our generation,” Alton emphasized. Alton was talking about those who are persecuted by China today. He was talking about Lai’s situation. He languishes in prison for his courage, for speaking out for things “we take for granted,” Alton said.

The Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong is doing its part, recently projecting images on landmarks in London, New York, and Washington, D.C. — images to help educate Westerners about the 10,000 some people who have been arrested in Hong Kong alone for dissent under the Chinese regime.

The world today is such that we all have a moral responsibility for those suffering under the Chinese Communist Party. Are you watching the Olympics? Do you have an iPhone? Am I writing this on an Apple computer? (Yes.) How many of the K95 masks we are wearing today were made in China? The decorations we recently took down from Christmas? Dollar stores may offer great discounts, but what were the conditions under which all these products were made?

Jimmy Lai is in prison for standing for what is right and just. He is in prison in solidarity with all who suffer under the Chinese tyranny — the Falun Gong, the Uyghur Muslims. As Lai has said, the Communist government wants to squash anything that gives people meaning and purpose beyond the Chinese Communist Party.

In New York in recent days, we’ve had two funeral Masses at St. Patrick’s Cathedral for young police officers murdered on the job. All the government authorities were there, witnessing the Catholic Mass and all its prayers, if not joining in. The new mayor has been reverent. All eyes were on the power of faith. As we turn to God in freedom here, we must not pretend that the evil of Communism is a thing of the past. We see it being presented through rose-colored screens on NBC these weeks.

Get to know the incredibly brave and grounded Jimmy Lai. Pray for him and his beloved wife and for all who suffer under the evil Chinese regime. And challenge yourself to make different choices. We know how difficult life can be in even the best of circumstances. Do we really want to benefit from the suffering of others for the sake of a few dollars off or other conveniences? And instead of cursing the imperfections of our democratic republic, we must recommit ourselves to use our freedom well.

This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.