New legislation (HR 8125) introduced this week by Reps. Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Tom Suozzi (D-NY) would rename the address of the Hong Kong Economic Trade Office in Washington, DC as 1 Jimmy Lai Way in honor of the renowned Hong Kong human rights defender who remains unjustly imprisoned by Hong Kong authorities.

            A 76-year-old democracy advocate and media entrepreneur, Lai has been incarcerated since December 2020 on multiple fabricated charges and is currently serving a sentence of almost six years in prison under politically-motivated fraud charges.

            “Jimmy Lai is a man of faith and conviction, someone who fervently believed that Hong Kong’s prosperity and vitality were built on the rights promised to its citizens,” said Rep. Smith, Chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, who nominated Lai for the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize. “For peacefully acting on this belief, he is arbitrarily detained.”

            “We will continue to press for Jimmy Lai’s unconditional release and seek ways to raise the diplomatic and reputational costs globally for the Hong Kong government and their Chinese Communist Party masters for their rough dismantling of democratic freedoms and the rule of law in Hong Kong,” said Smith.

            “The free world must continue calling attention to the Chinese Communist Party’s crimes in Xinjiang, erosion of democracy in Hong Kong, and saber-rattling against Taiwan,” said Rep. Suozzi. “Naming a street in Washington, DC, after Jimmy Lai, a pro-democracy advocate and journalist standing up for human rights in Hong Kong, will signal to the entire world that the United States stands in solidarity with those who oppose the tyranny and repression of the Chinese government.”

            In June 2021, Hong Kong authorities shuttered the Apple Daily newspaper that Jimmy Lai founded and published, and in January 2023, his Next Media company was delisted from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange under government coercion.

            “For as long as the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office continues to operate in Washington DC, their new address will symbolize that this champion of freedom stands against their growing authoritarianism and human rights abuses,” said Smith, who has authored legislation (HR 1103) that would require the US Secretary of State to determine if the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Offices in the United States merit the privileges and immunities granted to them by the International Organizations Immunities Act. 

Both HR 1103 and its companion bill in the Senate (S 490) have been passed by the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, respectively, and are currently awaiting Floor consideration by both chambers.

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