US Congress seeks to change Hong Kong office’s address to Jimmy Lai Way
Washington — Two U.S. congressmen have introduced a bill to rename the street in front of Hong Kong’s de facto embassy in Washington as “Jimmy Lai Way” in honor of the jailed media entrepreneur. The bill would also apply the name change to the mailing address for the office, officially known as the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office. Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey announced the bill in a statement Thursday, saying he and the bill’s co-author, Rep. Tom Suozzi of New York, wanted to honor the “renowned Hong Kong human rights defender who remains unjustly imprisoned by Hong Kong authorities.” Authorities jailed the 76-year-old founder of Hong Kong media group Next Digital, formerly Next Media, in December 2020 after accusing him of fraud. They also charged him with “conspiracy to collude with foreign countries or external forces to endanger national security” under Hong Kong’s National Security Law. The cases are still ongoing, and Lai has been denied bail. In the statement, Smith, who is chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, called the charges “fabricated” and “politically motivated.” “Jimmy Lai is a man of faith and conviction, someone who fervently believed that Hong Kong’s prosperity and vitality were built on the rights promised to its citizens,” Smith said. “For peacefully acting on this belief, he is arbitrarily detained.” Since Beijing imposed the tough Hong Kong security law in 2020, U.S. lawmakers from both parties have become increasingly concerned about the Asian financial hub’s autonomy and are looking at measures to put pressure on its government. Beijing says the security law is needed to maintain stability but has used it to arrest, jail and try hundreds of pro-democracy activists, stifling Hong Kong’s once vibrant civil society. In March, Hong Kong lawmakers unanimously and quickly approved their own sweeping national security law known as Basic Law Article 23, strengthening the government’s ability to silence dissent. “We will continue to press for Jimmy Lai’s unconditional release and seek ways to raise the diplomatic and reputational costs globally for the Hong Kong government and their Chinese Communist Party masters for their rough dismantling of democratic freedoms and the rule of law in Hong Kong,” Smith said in the statement. Smith, who has long been concerned about human rights in China, nominated Lai and other jailed, well-known Chinese rights defenders Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi, along with Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti, for the 2024 … “US Congress seeks to change Hong Kong office’s address to Jimmy Lai Way” →