HONG KONG — U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday he raised the issue with Chinese President Xi Jinping of releasing a prominent detained pastor and imprisoned Hong Kong activist Jimmy Lai, and quoted Xi as saying he'd consider the pastor but that Lai's case is a "tough one."
Speaking to reporters as he flew back from a trip to China, Trump said Xi told him he would give serious consideration to the case of Ezra Jin Mingri, pastor of an underground church detained in China in October in what observers have called an escalating crackdown on religious freedom.
“He said he’s gonna strongly consider the pastor," Trump said.
Trump said that the case of Lai, founder of the now-defunct pro-democracy Apple Daily who was accused of anti-China activities, was much more difficult for the Chinese president. "He told me that would be a tough one," Trump said.
The families of both Jin and Lai said they appreciated Trump for raising their cases with Xi.
Jin's Zion Church is among the largest so-called underground or house churches that are unregistered with the Chinese authorities. They defy Chinese government restrictions requiring believers to worship only in registered congregations.
His daughter, Grace Jin Drexel, said Friday that the family and supporters are “overjoyed” to hear what Trump had said about her father.
“It’s truly nothing short of miraculous!” she wrote to The Associated Press in a message. “We could not be more grateful to President Trump and his skillful administration for pressing the case!”
Despite Trump's far less optimistic tone on Lai, the former media mogul's daughter, Claire Lai, said she also was grateful to Trump and his administration for the commitment shown to her father’s release.
“He has earned his reputation as liberating the unjustly detained and I am confident he and his administration will be the ones to free my father,” she said in a message to the AP.
She called this moment an opportunity for Xi to do “the only just and honorable thing” for Lai and to show a gesture of good will to the world by releasing a man she said had dedicated himself to Hong Kong.
Activists say Beijing is becoming less willing to release prisoners who have confronted the government over human rights under Xi's rule. In 2017, the Chinese Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo died at a hospital in northeast China even after foreign governments urged China to release him for cancer treatment abroad.
Before his arrest, Lai, 78, was critical of Xi and the ruling Communist Party. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison in February under a national security law imposed by Beijing in 2020 that has virtually silenced dissent in Hong Kong.
Lai was found guilty of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and conspiring with others to publish seditious articles. His pro-democracy Apple Daily was shut down during a crackdown following massive anti-government protests that rocked the city in 2019.
Observers said Lai's plight symbolizes a decline in freedoms that Beijing had promised when the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997. Foreign governments, including the U.S. and U.K., have raised concerns about Lai for years. But the Hong Kong government insists his case had nothing to do with press freedom.
On Tuesday, China’s foreign ministry said Lai had been a key planner of anti-China activities that aimed at destabilizing Hong Kong, and said that the city’s affairs are China’s internal affairs.
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Tang reported from Washington. AP journalist Emily Wang in Washington contributed.
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