Associated Press has reported that former Apple Daily Hong Kong publisher Jimmy Lai has asked the United Nations – through his lawyers – to investigate his jailing and criminal charges as ‘legal harassment’, punishing him for speaking out.

The agency says Hong Kong’s crackdown continued this week with the arrest of veteran journalist Allan Au Ka-lun, for “conspiracy to publish seditious publication”, and his detention “for further investigation”.

AP reported Lai’s counsel Caoilfhionn Gallagher’s statement that Lai faced “the risk of spending the rest of his life in prison simply for speaking out, and for seeking to defend freedom of the press, democracy and the rule of law in Hong Kong”.

The appeal had been filed with UN special rapporteurs for freedom of opinion and expression, counter-terrorism and human rights, rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, and human rights defenders.