Al Jazeera English published this video item, entitled “Hong Kong court denies bail to Jimmy Lai over fraud charges” – below is their description.
Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai will spend the next six months in prison after he was denied bail on Thursday on what critics say are trumped-up charges designed to remove one of the government’s most vocal critics.
Lai is a well-known figure in the territory’s democracy movement and his media company Next Digital publishes the China-sceptic newspaper Apple Daily in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
The 71-year-old was arrested on Wednesday on charges of fraud for using his offices for purposes not stated on the lease, alongside two of his Next Digital colleagues, CEO Wong Wai-keung and Chief Operating Officer Chow Tat-kuen.
Al Jazeera’s Divya Gopalan reports from Hong Kong.
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Al Jazeera English YouTube Channel
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In This Story: Hong Kong
Hong Kong, officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China (HKSAR), is a metropolitan area and special administrative region of the People’s Republic of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta of the South China Sea. With over 7.5 million residents of various nationalities in a 1,104-square-kilometre (426 sq mi) territory, Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated places in the world.
Hong Kong became a colony of the British Empire after the Qing Empire ceded Hong Kong Island at the end of the First Opium War in 1842. The colony expanded to the Kowloon Peninsula in 1860 after the Second Opium War and was further extended when Britain obtained a 99-year lease of the New Territories in 1898. The whole territory was transferred to China in 1997. As a special administrative region, Hong Kong maintains separate governing and economic systems from that of mainland China under the principle of “one country, two systems”.
