Mark Pinkstone says US’ and UK’s reaction to the downfall of their key pawn in Hong Kong court ruling comes as no surprise

The verdict delivered on Monday by the three High Court judges in the national security case of Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, founder of the now-defunct Apple Daily newspaper, provides detailed legal principles, evidence and reasons for his convictions, showing that Lai’s case had nothing to do with press freedom. Yet the Western mainstream media pay no attention at all to the court judgment. Rather, it continues on its monologue that Lai is innocent and should be released.

The judges clearly stated that Lai was guilty of three charges and that he used the free press as a pretext to advance his own agenda to damage the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and endanger China’s national security.

The panel of three judges listened to 14 prosecution witnesses, including Lai himself, and examined 2,220 exhibits; the trial bundle totaled 80,000 pages. The trial lasted 156 days. It was, indeed, an exhaustive trial that took the judges four months to arrive at their verdict that Lai was guilty of all three counts of collusion with external forces and publishing seditious publications.

And every day, members of the diplomatic corps sat with local and foreign media in the courtroom, recording the fairness of the trial.

But immediately after the trial, Western politicians, Western mainstream media, and human rights organizations were quick to lambast it as a sham and untrustworthy, totally ignoring the 855-page judgment that set out the reasons why the three High Court judges unanimously arrived at their conclusion.

The critics had either not read the verdict or they chose to ignore it. Their bias was glaringly evident. By showing total disregard for the court’s verdict, they made themselves complicit in Lai’s plot to damage China and the Hong Kong SAR. Throughout Lai’s anti-China campaign over the years, the Western mainstream media played his hand and supported his every move. He was good copy. They are as guilty as Lai in the plot to cause harm to China and the Hong Kong SAR. They even backed the 2019-20 “black-clad” riots, which brought death and destruction in Hong Kong, and during which Lai played a vital role.

The Western media has dug a deep hole in supporting Lai, so deep they can’t get out of it. Instead, they have no choice but to disagree with the court’s verdict and continue their whitewashing of Lai. To agree with the verdict would be admitting their guilt for supporting and whitewashing Lai during his vile campaign. But the Western press is never wrong, so they say, so they had to stick to their policies of degrading Hong Kong SAR and Beijing.

The poor innocents in the Western world rely on the word of their daily newspapers and are thus totally oblivious of the real Hong Kong and Chinese mainland, whose successes are never reported in the Western media, so they are unaware of the real story, until they come and visit us.

Both the United States and the United Kingdom government wasted no time in attacking the guilty verdict on Lai. They should be ashamed of themselves. They are complicit in Lai’s web of deceit to harm the Hong Kong SAR and China as a whole. They hold no credibility, but they are partners in the Five Eyes alliance network, which shares a geopolitical mission to contain China, with undermining China’s international financial center, Hong Kong, as part of it; so their reaction to the downfall of their key pawn in Hong Kong ruling comes as no surprise. To agree with the verdict would betray Lai, and discourage other henchmen from doing the dirty work in the city.

The author is a former chief information officer of the Hong Kong government, a public relations and media consultant, and a veteran journalist.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.