Hong Kong sentences journalist to prison

Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai was sentenced to 20 years in prison by the city’s high court on Monday, a sober conclusion to the city’s pro-democracy history. Lai, publisher of the Apple Daily newspaper, was ostensibly suspected of “collusion with foreign forces,” “endangering national security,” and “conspiracy to publish seditious materials,” cnbc reported, but the case is recognized by many as an attack on free speech and dissent against the regime, which has a conviction rate of 99.98 percent. Communists gaining control of the courts was the very reason millions of citizens participated in protests in 2019 and 2020, but the regime’s conviction and sentencing of Lai, who is also a British citizen, punctuates the termination of freedom in Hong Kong and signals the oncoming “times of the gentiles.”