Editor’s note: The Washington Examiner is honored to publish the unedited remarks of this year’s Bradley Prize honorees. The below speech was given by Sebastien Lai.
Members of the board of the Bradley Foundation, distinguished prize winners, ladies and
gentlemen: As you can see, I am not Jimmy Lai. Instead of being here with you wonderful people, accepting this prestigious award, my father sits in a maximum security jail in Hong Kong as a high-risk category a prisoner. He’s in jail in Hong Kong for the same reason he is being celebrated here, for courage in the face of oppression.
He campaigned peacefully for democracy despite the threat to his business and life. He used his newspaper to further these rights in Hong Kong. Then the hammer came down in the form of a Beijing-imposed national security law in 2020, and everyone knew that he and his staff would be targeted. Did he flee to keep campaigning abroad, or did he stay and stand with the many who couldn’t leave, act as a lightning rod for all those who faced persecution for our shared beliefs of freedom?
As you all know by now, he chose the latter. At 77, he has spent the last four years in a maximum security jail in solitary confinement, facing multiple sham allegations. In court one day after a heated exchange with the national security judges, my father said, “In the end of the day, the truth will come out in the kingdom of God and that is good enough for me.”
To this day, he is defiant. To this day, even with his newspaper destroyed, he is shining a light on the oppression of this island that many of us used to call home. Why take that risk, you might ask?
You see, the inaugural editorial on June 20, 1995, of his newspaper, Apple Daily, two years before the U.K. handed the city back to China, read: “Are we not afraid of changes after 1997? We are afraid. But we refuse to be intimidated by fear.”
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They say a brave man lives in the hearts of millions, while a coward dies every day. But why settle just for having him in our heart if by working on his release, we can have him here among us?
Here’s to men and women that refuse to be intimidated by fear. Here’s to freedom, our now, and my father’s hopefully soon.
Sebastien Lai is the son of Jimmy Lai, a 77-year-old British citizen currently imprisoned in Hong Kong for his peaceful support of the pro-democracy movement.