McConnell on Jimmy Lai Sentencing: U.S. Must Employ Moral Authority In Demanding Release

WASHINGTON, D.C.
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U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), issued the following statement on Jimmy Lai:
“Jimmy Lai spent a career supporting in Hong Kong the freedoms so many Americans take for granted. I have been proud to call him my friend. The Chinese Communist Party may hope that, in sentencing Jimmy Lai to prison, it has closed the door on resistance in Hong Kong. In reality, it has attracted a harsher light to the totalitarian repression on which Beijing’s power depends.
“Strategic competition with the PRC will test the strength of our economy and the credibility of our deterrence. But it will also demand proof of the values for which we stand. Jimmy Lai is not the first champion of freedom that Beijing has deemed a threat, and he will not be the last to be targeted.
“Before he was imprisoned six years ago, Jimmy Lai spoke publicly about the strength of America’s moral authority in competition with the PRC. Today, the United States must employ that authority in demanding his release. The United States is stronger when it stands for freedom and justice and against repression – in Hong Kong as in Iran and Venezuela.”