What a terrible thought !
The SCMP reports
- Paralegal turned prosecution witness Wayland Chan says Apple Daily founder shared plan to influence foreign governments during meeting in Taipei in January 2020
- ‘Jimmy Lai said, according to historical experience, China’s implosion would happen very soon because the Chinese government mobilised many resources to monitor citizens,’ Chan adds
-
Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai Chee-ying sought to trigger mainland China’s political and economic collapse by influencing other nations’ foreign policies, paving the way for the introduction of American-style democracy, a court has heard.Paralegal turned prosecution witness Wayland Chan Tsz-wah said on Friday the Apple Daily founder shared his anti-China strategy with him during a meeting at the mogul’s villa in Yangmingshan, Taipei, in January 2020.
HK Columnist Nury Vitachi posted the following this week on X
US OFFICIALS QUIETLY told anti-China activist Jimmy Lai Chee-ying to halt the spiralling violence of the 2019 Hong Kong protests but he struggled to do so, a court heard from a “go-between” this week.
And then a large group of activists who had taken over a university… pic.twitter.com/nAmFdaGMk7
— Nury Vittachi (@NuryVittachi) April 20, 2024
Nury Vittachi
@NuryVittachi
US OFFICIALS QUIETLY told anti-China activist Jimmy Lai Chee-ying to halt the spiralling violence of the 2019 Hong Kong protests but he struggled to do so, a court heard from a “go-between” this week. And then a large group of activists who had taken over a university surrendered to police, causing the newspaper publisher to declare: “That wiped out my best men.” Meanwhile, Lai’s right-hand man, former US intelligence officer Mark Simon, gave the go-between a company he said was of a covert nature and could be used to liaise with foreign organizations and collect funds. . .
ASTONISHING REVELATIONS Extraordinary revelations came this week from the ongoing trial of newspaperman Jimmy Lai, 76, confirming US involvement, and the role of the publisher and his former US intelligence officer partner Mark Simon in backing the violent protests that roiled normally peaceful Hong Kong five years ago. Testimony from a go-between named Wayland Chan Tsz-wah, 32, detailed the problems that arose during the period after a legal extradition amendment was withdrawn. Protesters continued to use it as an excuse for an increasingly violent insurgency, with terrorist-grade bomb factories discovered at several locations. . . G7 RECOMMENDATION Background: In 2018, civil servants at Hong Kong’s Department of Justice continued their routine updating of the city’s British Common Law legislation. The city already had Asia’s highest-rated legal system, but to keep at the top, they followed a recommendation from a G7 financial law committee to upgrade the city’s extradition law. In the British era, arrested individuals from Mainland China had been simply put in vans, driven to the border, and dropped off “over the line”. The new extradition amendment gave people detained for specific serious crimes due legal protection. They could only be extradited after a lengthy process of hearings, typically taking 12 to 24 months. . .
MISINFORMATION However, by the first half of 2019, an extreme campaign of disinformation had totally misrepresented the amendment. The amendment was falsely painted as a new law “from Beijing” that enabled people (and even tourists) to be “snatched” from the city and “disappeared” in mainland China for political misdemeanours. The misinformation led to hundreds of thousands of protesters (organizers claimed “millions”) hitting the streets in June calling for its withdrawal. The amendment was withdrawn the same month, but anti-China groups continued the protests, turning it into a violent insurgency that caused billions of dollars’ worth of damage, shutting down the airport and wrecking scores of metro stations. . .
STOP THE VIOLENCE In July of 2019, US officials told newspaper publisher Jimmy Lai to tone down the violence, the court heard. This was a problem for several reasons. First, he had repeatedly told his newspaper staff to report events in a way that deliberately removed the gap between Hong Kong’s peaceful protesters and the violent “localist” thugs that smashed up or burned restaurants owned by families from Mainland China. This was described by his staff in earlier court hearings. Second, he had been financially backing the “old school” pro-American political individuals and groups in Hong Kong for years – often exactly the same anti-China politicians receiving cash or support from various US groups. But did not personally know the new generation of young “localist” leaders. He would need a go-between. . . THE GO-BETWEEN In July, the publisher arranged to meet Wayland Chan Tsz-wah, a paralegal aged 32, who he believed to be a high ranking activist who could spread the new message to a cluster of violent groups known as “the valiants”. The paralegal was invited to go to a designated restaurant and was asked to hand over his phone “for security reasons” before Jimmy Lai talked to him, the court was told. When he had done so, the publisher told him that things would have to change. The United States now wanted “no police or civilian fatalities”. Furthermore, they had said that the violence “should stop at some point”. Lai wanted this message taken to the violent groups, which were divided into multiple sub-groups with their own names, including JD Team, G20, Pink, Dragonslayer and others. (The code name for Jimmy Lai and Mark Simon was “Backer”.) Wayland Chan met with the publisher several times, he said, always having to give up his phone before conversations started. On one occasion, they met in a car parked near Hong Kong’s Supreme Court, the court heard. . .
US OPERATIONS Between face-to-face meetings, the younger activist received Whatsapp messages from Jimmy Lai about US progress in the anti-China effort, he told the court. Two American operations had been set up with Hong Kong in their names. One was a lobby group working to create the “Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act” and the other was a group called the “Hong Kong Democracy Council”. They were working to get western countries to sanction Hong Kong, remove its privileges, and damage its main sources of income – finance and tourism — although the community had done literally nothing to deserve such a punishment. . . INITIALLY UNAWARE Wayland Chan told the court that he had not been aware at first of the nature of the relationship between the anti-China publisher and US officials. “Only when he told me at a later stage about the US Government’s internal considerations, did I realise Jimmy Lai was not simply rallying for international support, but he knew certain criteria [set by US officials] and was trying to meet them,” he said at the hearing in the West Kowloon court this week. Chan contacted leading “valiant” individuals but struggled to get the message over to them, he said. In one case, his contact refused to believe that the message came from Jimmy Lai. . . MAN SET ON FIRE The insurgency remained out of control, and the violence got worse. Bomb factories were set up, and weapons smuggled into the city. One group started making TATP, the explosive used in the London bombings of 7 July 2005. In November of 2019, an old man tried to stop protesters smashing up a metro station in Ma On Shan, in a rural part of Hong Kong. The old man was doused in petrol as they tried to burn him alive. Jimmy Lai was dismayed, and contacted Wayland Chan for another meeting, also calling representatives of the old-school pro-American political groups known as the pan-democrats. . .
MAROONED The newspaper publisher also faced another setback later the same month, when protesters marooned themselves at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, which was situated on a single city block. Police took no action, but simply waited at the entrances, playing a range of popular music. After about 12 days, the protesters, bored and hungry, gave themselves up, walking out with their hands up. “That wiped out my best men,” Jimmy Lai told Chan, the court heard. . .
CHAN’S REWARD About two weeks later, Wayland Chan was invited to meet Mark Simon at the Hyatt Hotel in Shatin. As a reward to Chan, an overseas company with money in its bank account would be set up, he was told. This idea ran into an immediate difficulty. Hong Kong had strong policies against money laundering, which meant that it was difficult to open a bank account in the city for a company registered in the British Virgin Islands. When Jimmy Lai was told this, the publisher decided to offer one of his unused companies to Chan as a reward, and asked an assistant named Evan Lau to handle the formalities, the court heard. In early 2020, Chan attended a meeting where a company named Lacock Inc, owned by Jimmy Lai, was transferred to him. It had an HSBC account containing HK$80,000. . .
FOREIGN ORGANIZATIONS But then came another issue. Wayland Chan saw the company as his personal reward, and wanted to use it to develop his own business. Mark Simon had other ideas, of an ideological nature. He felt it should be used to as a channel for overseas groups to continue to contribute to their anti-China campaign. Mark Simon told Chan that the company was of covert nature and could be used to liaise with foreign organizations and collect funds, the court heard. The trial continues. .
