My Take | In Jimmy Lai’s case, the West has put itself on trial
- Weaponising human rights and interfering with other people’s judicial systems are par for the course for the Five Eyes nations and their media allies

Jimmy Lai Chee-ying is now in the dock facing charges of colluding with foreign forces under the national security law and a separate one for sedition. It will be interesting to hear the evidence, but even before that, the Western press just wants to put Hong Kong on trial.
Is Lai guilty or not? I have no idea. It’s not my job to decide or guess. Let the trial judge decide.
I am an old-fashioned hack and prefer the British common law tradition of avoiding interfering with the court’s business. But you know with the pundits, hacks and politicians of the nations in the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance, there is no respect for such niceties when it comes to their concerted and coordinated propaganda war against an enemy.
So Lai’s case has, predictably, been weaponised, and their politicians and editorialists have gone into high gear. Their reporters, or if you prefer, foreign correspondents, now can’t even write a straight news report about Lai without competing to out-editorialise each other. That is, of course, par for the course.
There are two reasons for this, both terribly obvious. One is, as we have said, typical of the Five Eyes and a few of their European allies to weaponise human rights and democracy in such foreign cases. That’s “the international community” or “the world” you usually read about in such reports. In reality, the rest of the world couldn’t give a damn about Lai’s case.