World Editors Forum president David Walmsley has urged authorities to release Jimmy Lai and let him leave Hong Kong, following his conviction by its high court.

He will be sentenced next year on the charges of sedition and conspiracy to collude with foreign forces, and could face life in jail.

Walmsley, who is also editor-in-chief of the Canada’s Globe and Mail, says the conviction, “says more about the authorities of a once-free Hong Kong than it does about the act of free speech and Apple Daily’s journalism.

“The World Editors Forum continues to appeal to those making the decision: Free Jimmy Lai. Let him leave Hong Kong. You have made your point.”

The pro-democracy campaigner and publisher of Apple Daily in Hong Kong and Taiwan, was awarded WAN-Ifra’s Golden Pen of Freedom in 2021. Walmsley says that when he received the award in absentia, “it was already too long since he had seen family and been allowed his freedom”.

Lai and the staff of the shuttered paper were honoured to highlight the fears and challenges of journalists in Hong Kong and the region, in the face of heightening curbs on their ability to do their jobs credibly and independently. One of the objectives of the Golden Pen is to turn the spotlight of public attention on repressive governments and the journalists who fight them.