Former Hong Kong media tycoon sentenced to decades in prison
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 9 February 2026
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jimmy Lai, a pro-democracy media tycoon in Hong Kong, has been jailed for 20 years for colluding with foreign forces under the city's controversial national security law.
Rights groups called it a death sentence for the 78-year-old, whose family has raised concerns about his health, but Hong Kong's leader said it was "deeply gratifying". We'll hear from Mr Lai's son about his father's situation.
Also in the programme: We'll be reflecting on a historic election victory for the Japanese prime minister Sanae Takaichi with a member of the governing Liberal Democratic Party; how the DNA of identical twinas is complicating a murder trial in France; and we'll get the reaction to last night's half-time Superbowl show by the Puerto Rican artist Bad Bunny, which has been criticised by President Trump.
(Photo shows Jimmy Lai walking to a prison van to head to court in Hong Kong, China on 12 December 2020. Credit: Tyrone Siu/Reuters/File Photo]
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:09.0 | Hello and welcome to NewsHour. It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service studios in central London. I'm Tim Fraggs. |
| 0:16.3 | We're going to begin in Hong Kong, where the former media tycoon Jimmy Lai has been sentenced 20 years in prison. |
| 0:22.4 | Seen by his supporters as a champion of democracy, Beijing has denounced him as a traitor, |
| 0:28.0 | a man who, in their words, used his newspaper Apple Daily, to poison the minds of his citizens. |
| 0:34.8 | This was the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Njian, today. |
| 0:43.1 | Jimmy Lai was a major planner and participant in a series of anti-China destabilizing activities in Hong Kong. |
| 0:51.6 | His actions have severely undermined the bottom line of the principle |
| 0:55.0 | of one country, two systems, seriously endangered national security and gravely harmed Hong Kong's |
| 1:02.0 | prosperity and stability, as well as the well-being of its residents, and thus must be severely |
| 1:08.0 | punished by law. Mr. Lai, whose 78, had already been held in prison for five years, |
| 1:13.8 | shortly after Hong Kong adopted a draconian national security law, |
| 1:17.3 | which in turn had followed huge pro-democracy protests. |
| 1:21.7 | Under that new law, Jimmy Lye was found guilty of foreign collusion |
| 1:24.8 | and publishing seditious material. |
| 1:26.9 | He holds a British passport. |
| 1:29.2 | Hong Kong was a British colony until it was handed back to China almost 30 years ago under an |
| 1:33.9 | agreement which was supposed to preserve a set up of one country, two systems. I'll be asking a member |
| 1:40.8 | of the governing Labour Party in Britain what he thinks the government should now do in a few minutes. |
| 1:45.3 | Before that, Sebastian Lye is Jimmy Lye's son. |
| 1:48.1 | He lives in London and we'll get on to that diplomatic response in a moment. |
| 1:51.9 | But first, what does he make of his father receiving a 20-year jail term? |
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