Trump says Xi would consider detained pastor, but called Jimmy Lai’s case “tough”
U.S. President Donald Trump said he raised with Chinese President Xi Jinping the cases of detained pastor Ezra Jin Mingri and imprisoned Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai during Trump’s trip to China, and Trump described Xi as open to considering the pastor’s situation but far less so on Lai.
Trump made the comments Friday as he flew back from the trip, speaking to reporters about what he said Xi told him regarding each man.
Trump said Xi told him he would strongly consider Jin’s case. Trump said Xi “strongly consider[s] the pastor” and that he “would give serious consideration to the case of Ezra Jin Mingri,” who is pastor of an underground church detained in China in October, according to the AP report.
Jin’s Zion Church is among the so-called underground or house churches that are unregistered with Chinese authorities. The report said such churches defy government restrictions that require worship to take place only in registered congregations.
Trump said Xi gave a different assessment of Lai’s situation, saying it would be a “tough one.” Trump said he told Xi about Lai, described by the report as the founder of the now-defunct pro-democracy Apple Daily, and Trump quoted Xi’s response to reporters as he returned from China.
The AP report said Lai was accused of anti-China activities and sentenced to 20 years in prison in February under a national security law imposed by Beijing in 2020, which has virtually silenced dissent in Hong Kong. It said Lai was found guilty of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and conspiring with others to publish seditious articles, and that Apple Daily was shut down during a crackdown after massive anti-government protests in 2019.
The report said the families of both Jin and Lai appreciated Trump for raising their cases with Xi. Jin’s daughter, Grace Jin Drexel, told the AP the family and supporters were “overjoyed” and said it was “truly nothing short of miraculous,” adding that the family could not be more grateful to Trump’s administration for pressing the case.
Claire Lai, the report said, also expressed gratitude to Trump and his administration, even as Trump described Xi as less optimistic about freeing Lai. In a message to the AP, Claire Lai said Trump has earned “his reputation as liberating the unjustly detained” and said she was confident that “he and his administration will be the ones to free my father.”
The AP report also said activists have argued that Beijing is becoming less willing to release prisoners who have confronted the government over human rights under Xi’s rule. It cited the 2017 death of Chinese Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo at a hospital in northeast China, even after foreign governments urged China to release him so he could receive cancer treatment abroad.
In recent years, observers have said Lai’s plight reflects a decline in freedoms that Beijing had promised when Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997. The AP report said foreign governments, including the United States and the United Kingdom, have raised concerns about Lai for years, while the Hong Kong government has insisted his case had nothing to do with press freedom.
The report said China’s foreign ministry, on Tuesday, said Lai had been a key planner of anti-China activities aimed at destabilizing Hong Kong, and said the city’s affairs are China’s internal affairs.