Back in August 2020, shortly after China had pushed through a new security law in Hong Kong, 200 police officers were sent to the offices of Apple Daily, a pro-democracy newspaper run by Jimmy Lai. Lai himself was arrested at home but was brought into the office and paraded around in handcuffs. The police also arrested other high ranking staff at the newspaper and seized papers and laptops.

Images from inside @appledaily_hk's building. Yes, this is #HongKong. pic.twitter.com/lgPyOoiLhs

— William Yang (@WilliamYang120) August 10, 2020

That same day, China froze Lai’s accounts in an attempt to shutter Apple Daily. Because readers pushed to keep the paper going it actually survived for a while until China finally froze its corporate bank accounts, shutting down the only outspoken pro-democracy newspaper in Hong Kong.

The excuse for all of this was that Lai and others had colluded with foreign agents to attempt to undermine China’s control. Ever since then China has been prosecuting people involved, trying to write its version of what happened into the history books. Yesterday the Washington Post published an exclusive report about Andy Li Yu-hin, a pro-democracy activist who was arrested trying to flee Hong Kong and who has been held by authorities ever since. Andy is now expected to testify against Apple Daily’s owner Jimmy Lai, saying that he was the ring-leader of a foreign organized effort and was telling others what to do. All of this is aimed at justifying the mainland’s decision to imprison Lai for life. But there’s reason to believe Andy Li is not testifying freely.

On Monday, Hong Kong’s highest profile trial since the 2020 crackdown will begin. Li’s testimony will be key to the government’s case against Jimmy Lai, the billionaire media mogul and founder of Apple Daily, the independent newspaper that has now been shut down. Lai is charged under the national security law with “colluding with foreign forces.” The Hong Kong authorities will use the prosecution to paint a narrative of the 2019 protests as a U.S.-directed plot aimed at destabilizing China, instead of the grass-roots-organized demonstrations they were, lawyers and analysts familiar with the case say.

Li, a 33-year-old gifted programmer who during the protests became a significant player in international lobbying and fundraising efforts, has already pleaded guilty under the national security law for his own role in the democracy movement, and he is expected to tie Lai to an alleged foreign conspiracy against Hong Kong and China…

“They have a plot line, a kind of story,” said Beatrice Li, Andy’s sister, of the prosecution. “And they need to fit the characters in.”

Andy Li was an pro-democracy activist, part of a group called Stand With Hong Kong (SWHK). SWHK used crowdfunding campaigns to raise money to place ads in foreign newspapers as a way to raise awareness of the fight for democracy in Hong Kong. But GoFundMe requires that funds be deposited in a US bank account so the funds went into a New York bank account belonging to Mark Simon, an executive working for Jimmy Lai. From there it was distributed to SWHK, including some which went directly to Andy Li. Li had become a major figure in the group because, unlike most people who worked anonymously, he identified himself by name.

On the day of the Apple Daily raid in August 2020, Andy Li was also arrested. He was released on bail after 48 hours without his passport. He joined a group of 11 other people attempting to flee Hong Kong by boat. But his group didn’t make it. They were arrested at sea by the Chinese Coast Guard and transferred to a prison where they were interrogated for months.

For the first three months, according to several people familiar with the conditions, they were confined to these solitary cells, where two guards on shift took turns to watch them around-the-clock, even as they went to the bathroom. The lights were always on. During the day, they were forced to sit cross-legged on a concrete stool until their joints grew sore, except during mealtimes or interrogations. Walking around the cell was generally not permitted. At night, they were awakened at random hours, for no apparent reason. They were never allowed outside.

The interrogations were relentless during those initial months, the people familiar with the conditions said. Guards threatened to send them to Xinjiang — where the Chinese government has arbitrarily detained more than a million Muslim Uyghurs and subjected them to torture, forced sterilization, surveillance and other conditions, according to the United Nations — if they did not detail their attempted escape.

Most of the 12 were not physically abused, but seven people familiar with conditions at the center said screaming could “consistently” be heard coming from one cell: Li’s…

Li was returned to Hong Kong by mainland authorities on March 22, 2021, and taken to the Siu Lam Psychiatric Center. Li’s family was unable to secure him independent legal representation, his sister said, and he continues to be represented by lawyers who have strong government ties.

Li has been held at this psychiatric center even since and his lawyers appear to have been selected by the mainland. In August 2021 he pleaded guilty to violating the security law and offered an apology. Starting today, he’ll testify that Jimmy Lai was the ringleader who directed his behavior, even though others involved say none of that ever happened. Because Andy Li’s trial is connected to Jimmy Lai’s case, he won’t be sentenced until that case is over. In other words, he’s still waiting to find out how long he’ll be in prison and there’s every reason to think his sentence could be dependent on how his testimony against Lai goes this week.

This is how the police state sausage gets made. The government creates a law to target its enemies and then jails them and mistreats them to get the outcome it wants. On paper it’s all perfectly legal but in reality it’s just a one-party dictatorship abusing its power to target those who dare to criticize it. They silence their critics and rewrite the actual history of what happened at the same time.