The UK will press for consular access to Hong Kong activist Jimmy Lai as Western governments are closely scrutinising the high-profile national security trial of the former media mogul.

“We have absolutely done everything, and we continue to ask for consular access for Jimmy Lai,” Anne-Marie Trevelyan, UK Minister of State for the Indo-Pacific, said in a parliamentary debate on Monday over Lai’s trial in the city. “We are very comfortable and certain that he is indeed a British citizen.”

Lai, who published pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, faces life in prison if convicted on national security charges. Western democracies have called on the Chinese authorities to release the 76-year-old, whose trial entered its second day on Tuesday amid heavy police presence. Any conviction of Lai risks further inflaming ties between China and the US and the UK.

China has condemned the US and UK statements calling for his release as irresponsible. “This is politically motivated and one hundred percent double standard. China firmly rejects this,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a regular press briefing on Monday.

Trevelyan said Hong Kong prison authorities had repeatedly denied UK consular access to Lai. “China considers anyone of Chinese heritage born in China to be a Chinese national. It does not recognise other nationalities and therefore considers Mr Lai to be exclusively Chinese,” she said in a speech.

Lai’s son, Sebastien, last week told Bloomberg News his father only holds a British passport and hadn’t been granted consular visits. 

The British consulate in Hong Kong, among others, sent a representative to observe the first two days of the trial, where Lai’s lawyers sought to dismiss a colonial-era sedition charge. Lai also faces two collusion charges under the Beijing-imposed national security law.

The three judges overseeing the case on Tuesday adjourned the trial until Friday (Dec 22), when they are expected to deliver their decision on the sedition charge. Lai waved and blew kisses to his family in the public gallery as he left the court in West Kowloon.

Trevelyan declined to say whether the UK government would impose any sanctions on Hong Kong officials over the national security law when asked by a fellow conservative lawmaker.

“We continue to look at those under the global human rights sanctions regulations in this arena, but we do not speculate about future sanctions designations, because of course that could reduce their impact,” she said.

The US government has sanctioned a number of Hong Kong and Chinese officials for undermining the Asian financial hub’s autonomy and curbing the freedom of expression. Hong Kong in 2021 called one such move “insane, shameless and despicable”.

  - Bloomberg