national leaders,<\/a> lawmakers, and Lai\u2019s family have spoken out about the court\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n\u201cEvery time when the Hong Kong government could have done the right thing, they decided not to,\u201d Sebastien Lai, Jimmy Lai\u2019s son, said during the press conference. \u201cIt took decades and decades to build up the Hong Kong legal system to what it was, the respect that it had internationally. Within five years, this government essentially managed to destroy it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hearing the sentence was \u201chorrible,\u201d Sebastien said. \u201cEven though you expect this sentence to come, you\u2019re still devastated by it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The decades-long sentence is \u201cessentially tantamount to a life sentence\u201d or \u201ca death sentence, because in the conditions that my father is being kept in, I don\u2019t know if he even has a tenth of that,\u201d Sebastien said.<\/p>\n
At the sentencing hearing, Jimmy Lai \u201cwas stoic and he smiled almost as an act of defiance\u201d to the \u201chorrible people who are doing \u2026 horrible things,\u201d Sebastien said. \u201cIt makes me remember one quote that Apple Daily had in its inaugural edition, and it says, \u2018Are we not afraid of the handover in 1997? Of course, we\u2019re afraid, but we refuse to be intimidated by fear.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople who do amazing things like my father has done, courageous things, they feel like everybody else, but they refuse to be intimidated by fear,\u201d Sebastien said. \u201cStill to this day, he is still refusing to be intimidated by fear.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jimmy Lai \u201cknows that he gave his all for his beliefs, for freedom, for democracy, for the people of Hong Kong, until there was no more to give,\u201d Sebastien said. \u201cYou can\u2019t control what these bullies, these horrible people do to you. You control what you do. And he has done that. And it\u2019s incredible. It\u2019s incredible that he\u2019s still holding strong.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you live always deterred by fear, you don\u2019t really live at all,\u201d Claire Lai said. \u201cBut my father, he always knew that, he always trusted in divine providence from the very first day of his arrest up until most recently. He knew that he was in God\u2019s good hands, and he fully trusted that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Another solution\u2019 needed for a release<\/h2>\n
President Donald Trump \u201chas said multiple times that this is a case that he cares about. He\u2019s mentioned it to Xi Jinping already,\u201d Sebastien said.<\/p>\n
Trump is scheduled to go to China and meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in April. The visit \u201cwill obviously be crucial,\u201d Sebastien said. \u201cAnd hopefully my father will still be OK health-wise until that point.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re hopeful that now that the sentence is in, that we can move on to hopefully a political, diplomatic, solution for his release, and hopefully, our father will be back with us in the not-too-distant future,\u201d Claire said during a Feb. 9 interview with \u201cEWTN News Nightly.\u201d<\/p>\n