As pro-democracy publisher Jimmy Lai spoke in his defense at a Hong Kong court Tuesday, his son Sebastien Lai was in Geneva calling for the United States and other world leaders to help secure this father’s release. 

Speaking on Tuesday at the latest hearing in his national security trial, Lai, 77, denied any intention to incite violence among protesters.

He defended an opinion piece published in 2019 in the now-shuttered Apple Daily newspaper that he founded in which he suggested that pro-democracy protesters establish a leadership structure to weed out those who wished to engage in violence during protests that year.  

“By saying they should choose a leadership group, [it means that] they should put down some principle or bottom line for the valiant acts which, basically, is for them to stop the violence,” Lai said in court.

The British national has been standing trial for more than a year on charges of collusion with foreign forces and sedition under Hong Kong’s national security law.  Lai rejects the charges, which foreign governments and press freedom groups have said are politically motivated. 

Hong Kong authorities deny that the trial is unfair and have previously told VOA that the government respects press freedom and the rule of law.

Lai has been in solitary confinement since late 2020. Sebastien Lai raised concerns about his father’s health as he advocated for him in Geneva.  

“I ask that you join my call to free Jimmy Lai and champion him for all he’s given in the hope of freedom,” the younger Lai said Monday at the annual Human Rights and Democracy summit in Geneva.  

When Beijing’s national security law was enacted in Hong Kong in 2020, Sebastien Lai said his father knew he would be a target.

“But he refused to leave,” he said. “Six decades after landing on the shore of this island in pursuit of freedom, he decided to stay and stand with his fellow protesters.” 

Jimmy Lai was born in Guangzhou, China, and fled to Hong Kong when he was 12. He worked in a garment sweatshop before eventually founding the successful clothing brand Giordano. He later moved into media, founding Apple Daily in 1995.

Both the United States and Britain have criticized Hong Kong’s case against him. During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump in October said he would “100%” get Lai released, without specifying details.

Sebestien Lai said Trump’s comment gave the family “a lot of hope.”

But he cautioned that time is running out for his father, who has diabetes. The publisher’s international legal team says he isn’t receiving adequate medical care, which authorities deny.

“His body is breaking down,” Sebastien Lai told Reuters ahead of the summit. “Time is running out for my father.”  

Lai’s international legal team urged global leaders to stand up for press freedom at the U.N. Human Rights Council next week. 

“How the world responds will send a vital message to authoritarians across the world,” Caoilfhionn Gallagher, head of Lai’s international legal team, told Reuters.  

Gallagher and her team at the London law firm Doughty Street Chambers have faced significant harassment for their role defending Lai.

On social media and in email, Gallagher has faced threats of death, rape and dismemberment, The Guardian reported. She has also been targeted with hundreds of attempts to hack her bank account.  

The Bar Council, the representative body for barristers in England and Wales, expressed concern about the harassment.  

Some information in this report came from Reuters.  
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Hanoi, Vietnam — Vietnam will cut one in five public sector jobs and slash billions of dollars from government budgets, after the country’s rubber-stamp parliament on Tuesday gave the go-ahead to a radical streamlining drive.

The reform are creating unease in a communist country where working for the state long meant a job for life.

Described as “a revolution” by senior officials, the drive will see the number of government ministries and agencies slashed from 30 to 22.

The National Assembly voted to pass the government’s organizational structure, a statement on the parliament’s website said.

The ministries of transport, planning and investment, communications and labor have been scrapped, and state media, the civil service, the police and the military will face cuts.

As part of the government restructuring, the National Assembly on Tuesday approved two new deputy prime ministers, taking the total to seven.

Almost two million people worked in the public sector as of 2022, according to the government, although the International Labor Organization puts the figure much higher.

One in five of these jobs will be eliminated over the next five years.

The government has said that 100,000 people will be made redundant or offered early retirement, but it has yet to offer clarity on how the much larger target will be reached.

Vietnam’s top leader To Lam, who half a year ago became Communist Party general secretary following the death of his predecessor, has said that state agencies should not be “safe havens for weak officials”.

“If we want to have a healthy body, sometimes we must take bitter medicine and endure pain to remove tumors,” Lam said in December.

He has also said that the plan had received “large consensus from the people”.

But several workers told AFP they were laid off with little notice and were concerned that decisions about which employees to keep were not based on ability.

Thanh, a pseudonym to protect his identity, told AFP his 12-year career as a TV producer was “aggressively” terminated last month.

The state-controlled news channel where he worked was shuttered, one of five broadcasters already closed, and Thanh was given two weeks’ notice.

“It is painful to talk about,” said Thanh, a father who has turned to driving a taxi.

Business impact 

Building on stellar economic growth of 7.1 percent in 2024, Vietnam —a global manufacturing hub heavily reliant on exports — is aiming for eight percent this year.

But anxiety is mounting over the country’s potential vulnerability to tariffs under the new Trump administration.

A bloated bureaucracy is also seen as a brake on growth, as is a high-profile anti-corruption campaign that has slowed everyday transactions.

Authorities say savings from the cuts in spending could total $4.5 billion over the next five years, despite costs of more than $5 billion for retirement and severance packages.

Streamlining the bureaucracy has been a Communist Party policy for nearly a decade but Lam is pushing the scheme ahead rapidly.

Lam has also enthusiastically pursued an anti-graft campaign that has swept up dozens of business leaders and senior government figures, including two presidents and three deputy prime ministers since 2021.

Critics accuse him of targeting his rivals through the action, but the drive has proved popular with the public and analysts say Lam may be looking to bolster his legitimacy ahead of the next Communist Party congress in early 2026.

The turmoil, however, has threatened the country’s reputation for stability and there are fears the bureaucratic reforms could also cause short-term chaos.

At a press conference last week, Pham Thu Hang, spokesperson for the foreign affairs ministry, said the drive “would not affect the investment and business environment in Vietnam.”
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Manila, Philippines — The Philippines has detected foreign attempts to access intelligence data, but its cyber minister said on Tuesday no breaches have been recorded so far.

Attempts to steal data are wide-ranging, said minister for information and communications Ivan Uy. Advanced Persistent Threats or APTs have repeatedly attempted but failed to infiltrate government systems, suggesting the country’s cyber-defenses have held firm.

APTs are a general term for cyber actors or groups, often state-backed, that engage in malicious cyber activities.

“These have been present for quite some time, and threats come from many actors, but a big majority of them are foreign,” Uy told Reuters.

Some of these threats, which Uy referred to as “sleepers,” had been embedded in systems before being exposed by government’s cyber security efforts.

“Why are these things operating in those systems, without even anybody calling it out?,” he said.

So far, the government has not seen any cyberattacks targeting critical infrastructure, he said.

“Hopefully it’s because our cyber defenses and cyber security are strong enough,” he said.

Uy acknowledged the difficulty of attributing cyber intrusions to specific attackers, as they sometimes leave misleading digital traces.

However, the government is working through diplomatic channels and sharing intelligence with the military, including with other countries, to validate threats and strengthen defenses, he said.

Last year, the Philippine said it thwarted attempts by hackers operating in China to break into websites and e-mail systems of the Philippine president and government agencies, including one promoting maritime security.

Uy described the escalating cyber threats as part of a global arms race, where nations and criminal organizations exploit digital vulnerabilities for financial or strategic gain.

“World War III is happening and it is cyber,” Uy said. “These weapons are non-kinetic. They are cyber, digital, virtual, but it’s happening. The attacks and defenses are happening as we speak, without any physical manifestation.”

Beyond cyberattacks, Uy has also flagged a surge in deepfakes and what he referred to as “fake news media outlets” aiming to manipulate public opinion ahead of the Philippines’ mid-term elections in May, and the ministry has deployed tools to combat them.

“Misinformation and disinformation are riskier with respect to democracies like ours, because we rely on elections, and elections are based on personal opinion,” Uy said.
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TOKYO — Japan’s government approved on Tuesday new targets to cut the country’s greenhouse gas emissions through 2040, alongside a revised energy plan and an updated industrial policy for the same period.

The measures, which seek to bolster long-term policy stability for businesses, focus on promoting decarbonization, ensuring a stable energy supply and strengthening industrial capacity to drive economic growth.

Under the new climate policy, Japan aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 60% from 2013 levels by 2035 and by 73% by 2040, extending its 2030 goal of a 46% cut.

The emissions-cutting target sparked calls for deeper reductions from experts and ruling coalition members when it was first proposed, as the world’s fifth-biggest carbon emitter struggles to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels.

Despite more than 80% of 3,000 public comments supporting a more ambitious target, the environment and industry ministries finalized the goal without changes, citing prior deliberations by climate experts.

As part of global efforts to combat climate change, Japan plans to submit its new target, known as a Nationally Determined Contribution under the Paris Agreement, to the United Nations this month.

The revised energy policy aims for renewables to account for up to 50% of Japan’s electricity mix by fiscal year 2040, with nuclear power contributing another 20% as the country pushes for clean energy while meeting rising power demand.

Japanese utilities have struggled to restart nuclear reactors since the 2011 Fukushima disaster, limiting nuclear power to just 8.5% of Japan’s electricity supply in 2023.

The new energy plan removes the previous goal of minimizing reliance on nuclear and calls for building next-generation reactors.

A new national strategy integrating decarbonization and industrial policy through 2040, aligned with the emission target and energy plan, was also approved by the cabinet.

It aims to develop industrial clusters in areas rich in renewable energy, nuclear power, and other low-carbon power sources.

However, uncertainties are emerging around Japan’s policies, as the domestic offshore wind market, a key driver of renewable energy growth, faces headwinds from inflation and high costs, recently prompting Mitsubishi Corp to review three domestic projects.
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Bangkok — Efforts to shut down online scam centers in Myanmar appeared to gain momentum Monday as a top Chinese security official visited both sides of the Thai-Myanmar border ahead of expected large-scale repatriations of workers in the illicit industry.

The visit by Liu Zhongyi, China’s vice minister of public security and commissioner of the Criminal Investigation Bureau, was part of a stepped-up effort by the three countries to address the online scam problem, Thailand’s Deputy Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai told reporters.

Areas of Myanmar bordering Thailand have been serving as havens for criminal syndicates employing an estimated hundreds of thousands of people from Southeast Asia and elsewhere who help carry out online scams including false romantic ploys, bogus investment pitches and illegal gambling schemes.

Such scams have cost victims around the world tens of billions of dollars, while the people recruited to carry them out have often been tricked into taking the jobs under false pretenses and find themselves trapped in virtual slavery.

Last week, some 260 people from 20 nations, including many from Africa, crossed from Myanmar into Thailand after they were reportedly rescued from scam centers.

Thailand and China coordinate crackdown on scam centers

On a visit to China in early February, Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra vowed along with China’s leader Xi Jinping to crack down on the scam networks. Just ahead of her visit, Thailand cut off electricity, internet and gas supplies to several areas in Myanmar along the border, citing national security and severe damage that Thailand has suffered from scam operations.

The repatriations of foreign workers from Myanmar have been organized by the Border Guard Force in Myawaddy, a militia of the Karen ethnic minority that exercises control over the area. However, critics have accused it of being involved in the criminal activities, at least to the extent of providing protection to the scam centers.

The group’s leader, Saw Chit Thu, denied in a news conference Monday that his group was involved in scam activities, but acknowledged business links to some properties hosting the centers, which he said initially operated simply as resorts.

Thai media reported last week that Thailand’s Department of Special Investigation was considering seeking arrest warrants for Chit Thu and others for alleged human trafficking.

Thousands of workers employed by scam networks

Thai officials have said as many as 7,000-10,000 more people may be repatriated, but Phumtham cautioned that Thailand would only receive those that are ready to be taken back right away by their home countries.

The Bangkok Post newspaper reported that an initial batch of about 600 Chinese nationals from scam centers are expected to be flown back to China on chartered flights when Liu concludes his visit.

Liu visited the border areas in Thailand’s Tak province Monday and appeared in Myawaddy in Myanmar, apparently at a location where hundreds of people believed to have been rounded up from several scam centers are being held awaiting repatriation.

The video of Liu’s visit showed hundreds of people there sitting on the ground with their belongings in a large open-walled hall.

“China is actively conducting bilateral and multilateral cooperation with Thailand, Myanmar, and other countries, taking comprehensive measures to address both the symptoms and root causes, and working together to block criminals from committing crimes in relevant countries,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said in Beijing.

“This is part of our joint efforts to eradicate the scourge of online gambling and telecom fraud, and to maintain the safety of people’s lives and property and the order of exchanges and cooperation among regional countries.”

Stories of Chinese trapped in Myanmar hurt Thailand’s reputation

Dramatic stories of Chinese people being lured to work in Thailand only to be trafficked into a scam compound in Myanmar spread widely on social media in China, causing alarm and denting Thailand’s reputation as a safe destination for Chinese visitors.

Among those trapped was Chinese actor Wang Xing, who arrived in Thailand on a promise of getting a job and was abducted to Myanmar. He was quickly rescued after the incident circulated on social media.

An earlier crackdown on scam centers in Myanmar was initiated in late 2023, after China expressed embarrassment and concern over illegal casinos and scam operations along its border in Myanmar’s northern Shan state.

Ethnic guerrilla groups with close ties to Beijing shut down many operations, and an estimated 45,000 Chinese nationals suspected of involvement were repatriated.
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