My message to Keir Starmer: Free my father Jimmy Lai before it is too late

Dear Prime Minister,

I write with a desperate plea for you to save my father’s life. My father, Jimmy Lai, is a British citizen who has done more to defend the values of freedom, justice and democracy than could ever be expected of anyone. He is 78, and his health is failing. My heart breaks to think of him alone in the concrete cell in which he has spent five long years. Please bring him home to his family before it is too late.

As you begin your historic visit to China, you have a unique opportunity. Do not waste it. This is not about negotiating a handful of business contracts or extracting a promise of investment. It is about liberating a British prisoner of conscience: a husband, father and grandfather. It is about proving yourself worthy of a place in the history books.

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You have never met my father, but if he were with you now, he would tell you that silence in the face of injustice is a form of complicity. He would remind you that the measure of a man is his courage, and that the measure of a nation is its commitment to defending its people, wherever they are and whoever they are being persecuted by.

My father has suffered enough: wrongly arrested and imprisoned, tried on trumped-up charges based on evidence apparently obtained through torture, and convicted of nothing more than acts of journalism and political campaigning. He is being viciously persecuted by the Chinese and Hong Kong authorities because he dared to speak truth to power.

Last week, your government granted permission for China to build a “super-embassy” in the heart of London. I am not alone in feeling afraid of the long arm of repression that reaches from Beijing to the Hong Kong diaspora in the UK. We have watched China flagrantly breach human rights and the rule of law in my father’s case. What is to stop them from doing the same in their new super-embassy?

To give so much away to a country that is doing so much harm to a British citizen makes many of us fear that we cannot rely on your government to protect us. This trip is your chance to show that our fears are misplaced. If you can secure the release of this one man, you will show a whole nation that they can trust you to protect their interests.

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This is not just a matter of national values and national security. Releasing my father will also have economic benefits. No country that disrespects the rule of law is a good place to do business – contracts are rendered unenforceable, employers are vulnerable to political pressure, and citizens recruited to work there are at risk of human rights violations. Standing up for my father means defending the very values that enable trade and growth.

Making my father’s release a condition of doing business would signal to Beijing that the UK sees the rule of law and the economy as codependent. It would show China that the UK will not be bullied or compromised. It would be an act of leadership and principle fit for an era of unstable politics. It would advance the UK’s interests and protect the conscience of the global community – all for the price of saving an innocent man’s life.

As a citizen, son, and father myself, I ask you to bring my dad home. If you do not, we will all be the poorer for it.