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Welcome. My name is Dan Hugar, librarian and research associate at the Acton Institute.

Today I'm joined by Steve Barrows, chief operating officer at the Acton Institute.

Today we'll be talking about the entrepreneur and pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lye, who was

sentenced by a Hong Kong court to 20 years in prison on Monday, February 9th in his sort of landmark

national security trial. Last time I was together with Steve, we were talking about the conviction.

Now sentencing has occurred. This is from the report of the New York Times on Monday, February 9th. For decades, Jimmy Lai, the media mogul, used his wealth and his newsroom in Hong Kong to criticize Beijing's authoritarian excesses and give a voice to those who hoped for democracy in China. On Monday, as a court in Hong Kong sentenced him to 20

years in prison, the city made clear that defiance now carries the same price as it does across the

border. The landmark ruling completes a year-long effort by Beijing to dismantle the influence of the

self-proclaimed troublemaker, who it blamed for masterminding Hong Kong's pro-democracy protests

nearly seven years ago. Critics say that Beijing declared Mr. Lai guilty before he could

ever receive a fair trial. The decision reached far beyond one man's fate, along with Mr. Lai,

six of his former employees at the shuttered Apple Daily newspaper were sentenced to terms of up to

10 years, establishing a grim new benchmark for the city's once freewheeling media. While the

government maintains that these cases are about national security, the scale of the penalties

underscores the narrowing window for independent journalism in what was once Asia's Media Hub.

Those other Apple Daily folks, it's important to recognize.

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