Family members and advocates of imprisoned Catholic pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai offered urgent pleas for his release ahead of President Xi Jinping’s planned trip to the U.S. to meet with President Donald Trump.
In anticipation of Xiʼs visit to Washington on Sept. 24, Sebastien Lai, Jimmy Lai’s son, met with leaders to advocate for his father. He joined a Sept. 16 congressional hearing led by Rep. Chris Smith, R-New Jersey.
“Jimmy Lai is not being imprisoned because he committed any act of violence whatsoever,” Smith, co-chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, said.
“His son has emphasized that his father has never, never advocated violence. Rather, Jimmy Lai used his voice, his newspaper, and his public platform to support freedom and democracy,” he said.
Smith said he introduced legislation Sept. 16 that would require the State Department to quickly assess any death in custody of a Hong Kong political prisoner and impose sanctions on officials found responsible. He titled the bill the “Jimmy Lai Hong Kong Political Prisoner Accountability Act of 2026.”
At the hearing, Sebastien Lai offered testimony along with Steve Yates, a research fellow on China and national security policy, and Mark Clifford, president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation.
“I want to thank America, President Trump, who has been a true champion of my fatherʼs, his administration, and the senators and members of both parties whose support has never wavered and only gotten stronger. That is moral courage, and my family does not take it for granted,” Sebastien Lai said.
“By the end of this year my father will have spent six years in a maximum-security prison in solitary. At 78, he is the oldest political prisoner in Hong Kong. With a 20-year sentence looming over him, if he’s not freed soon, he will most likely die in prison,” he said.
“My sister Claire was to testify beside me today. A few weeks ago, she was diagnosed with cancer,” he said.
“I was with her in London last week as she began chemotherapy. My father learned of his own daughterʼs diagnosis from a maximum-security prison. He cannot hold her hand. She wants nothing more than to have him with her for this fight,“ he said.
“We hope the Chinese authorities will consider what compassionate release would mean for her, and for a 78-year-old man who has already suffered enough,” he said.
“America understands, in its bones, that freedom dies with the last man willing to defend it and that the cost of not standing up for liberty is not felt until it is too late,“ he said.
The appeal to Xi “is simple,” Sebastien Lai said. “My father poses no threat. His imprisonment makes him a symbol of injustice; his death in prison would be a disgrace. Let Jimmy Lai come home to his family and let him sit beside his daughter in her hardest moment.”
America understands, in its bones, that freedom dies with the last man willing to defend it and that the cost of not standing up for liberty is not felt until it is too late.”
Sebastien LaiSon of imprisoned Hong Kong media publisher and democracy advocate Jimmy Lai
Clifford, of the Washington‑based advocacy group promoting human rights in Hong Kong, spoke on behalf of his friend Jimmy Lai and to remind “people that Jimmy is just one of hundreds of political prisoners being held in often appalling conditions.”
“Iʼd like to emphasize the release of Jimmy Lai would be something President Trump, Republicans and Democrats, indeed, freedom-loving people around the world would applaud,” Clifford said. “It would be a unifying event at the time when the world really needs it.”
Yates said Jimmy Lai’s case is “a test of character, of Xi Jinping’s leadership, of the president’s relationship with his counterpart, and of whether there remains any credible basis for the assumptions on which American policy toward Hong Kong was long constructed.”
The case is “a litmus test of whether there remains any reason to believe there is a future in Xi Jinping’s China for the kind of man Jimmy Lai is: a child of God, a lover of the real China, and, it may fairly be said, one of China’s greatest entrepreneurs,” Yates said.
Lai’s health ‘is going to get worse’
At a subsequent event, Sebastien Lai spoke at a press conference at Georgetown University about his father.
Trump has previously met with Xi about Jimmy Lai’s case, which did not end with his release, but Sebastian Lai said he does not believe “it is a lost cause.” He said he hopes Trump raises his father’s case “again and again.”
Sebastian Lai detailed his father’s health, which “hasnʼt gotten any better” while in solitary confinement.
“He now has heart issues. His nails fall off. His teeth are rotting. During the summer, he bleeds all over his body because [of] his rashes,” he said.
His health was especially worrisome recently because “Hong Kong just had a record summer,” Sebastien Lai said. “The heat traps in there and essentially bakes in itself. So weʼre very, very worried.”
Caoilfhionn Gallagher, human rights lawyer and leader of the international legal team representing Jimmy Lai, further laid out the urgency of the case.
“It’s very clear that if someone is detained in solitary confinement for an extended period of time, there is a direct ramification for their mortality,” she said.
“The risk to prisoners detained in solitary confinement is particularly heightened if they’re elderly or diabetic, and Jimmy Lai is both. So this couldn’t be a more urgent and timely discussion,” she said.
Gallagher also noted the broader human rights issues and lack of democracy in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong “has become a place where you can be thrown in prison for singing the wrong song, or not singing the right song, or wearing the wrong T-shirt, printing the wrong newspaper. And I think Jimmy Laiʼs case is hugely important in itself because of who he is,” Gallagher said.
“Heʼs probably the worldʼs most famous political prisoner at the moment. His case is hugely important, but we think part of why theyʼve gone for Jimmy Lai is because by getting the biggest fish of all, it sends the message to the small fry across Hong Kong,” Gallagher said.
“It makes very clear that their message is keep silent or youʼll be next,” Gallagher said.
Xi’s visit to the U.S. offers “a particular opportunity to shine a light on this issue,” she said.