Pro-democracy media mogul Jimmy Lai has taken the stand in Hong Kong, testifying for the first time after being charged with foreign collusion under the city’s punitive national security law.

Speaking in court on Wednesday, he said he started a media business because “to participate in delivering freedom is a very good idea for me … the more information you have, the more you are in the know and the more you are free.”

Lai sounded hoarse as he swore an oath on the bible, but his voice grew stronger as he gave testimony. He sat at the desk, his reading glasses on the table in front of him.

He said Apple Daily, the paper he founded, became popular because it shared the core values of Hong Kong people.

Lai’s case is one of the most prominent under the national security law imposed by Beijing in 2020, with western countries and rights groups demanding his release.

The 76-year-old founder of Apple Daily is accused of colluding with foreign forces, a charge that could carry a sentence of up to life in prison. He has pleaded not guilty.

His testimony comes with Hong Kong’s political freedoms already under the spotlight, after a court jailed 45 democracy campaigners for subversion in the city’s largest national security trial on Tuesday.

Lai’s case centres on his newspaper’s publications, which supported huge, pro-democracy protests in 2019 and criticised Beijing’s leadership.

Lai has been behind bars since December 2020, and concerns have been raised for his health.

“The case of Jimmy Lai is not an outlier, it’s a symptom of Hong Kong’s democratic decline,” the Committee to Protect Journalists said in a statement on Monday.

“Hong Kong’s treatment of Jimmy Lai – and more broadly of independent media and journalists – shows that this administration is no longer interested in even a semblance of democratic norms.”

Hong Kong and Beijing have rejected the criticism, condemning Lai as “a voluntary political tool of foreign forces trying to curb China through Hong Kong”.

The crowd outside the court on Wednesday morning was smaller than for Tuesday’s sentencing of the 45 pro-democracy figures. A heavy police presence patrolled the area.

About 100 people were queued up by 8am, huddled against the driving rain and wind.

William Wong, 64, said he had long followed the case against Apple Daily and its founder, Lai.

“I’m a reader of Apple Daily. It’s been a few years, and Mr Lai is jailed. He’s elderly and his health is not too well, so I want to support him in person.”

At the front of the queue a buoyant group of Lai supporters rallied themselves together, sharing takeaway hot chocolates and warming themselves under space blankets.

“We really want to support him. It’s for us Hongkongers, for Hong Kong, for my Hong Kong,” said CY Chen, a man in his 70s who said he had been jailed on charges for illegal assembly during the 2019 protests.

“People like Jimmy Lai are very few nowadays, people who can speak for us. So we treasure him and we care about him.”

Since the prosecution opened in January, it has alleged that on multiple occasions Lai asked the United States and other countries to impose sanctions “or engage in other hostile activities” against China and Hong Kong.

Lai faces one count of “conspiracy to publish seditious publications” as well as two counts of conspiracy to foreign collusion.

The case against him revolves around 161 articles published in Apple Daily, as well as his own interviews and social media postings.

The newspaper was forced to close in 2021 after police raids and the arrests of its senior editors.

The prosecution accused Lai and six Apple Daily senior executives of using the media business as a platform to “stir up opposition to the government … and to collude with foreign countries”.

Dozens of local and foreign politicians and scholars – including former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo – were named by the prosecution as Lai’s “agents”, “intermediaries” or “collaborators”.

Lai is also accused of supporting two young activists in lobbying for foreign sanctions via a protest group called “Stand With Hong Kong”.

The six executives and two activists have pleaded guilty, with five of them testifying against Lai.

Last month, British prime minister Keir Starmer told parliament that Lai, who holds British citizenship, was “a priority” for his Labour government.

Starmer raised the issue in a meeting with the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, on Monday.

Lai’s son had previously said “much stronger” support from the British government was needed as Lai’s health “could get much worse at any moment”.

A legal team led by a senior British rights lawyer has filed a number of complaints to the United Nations concerning arbitrary detention and prolonged solitary confinement.

On Sunday, the Hong Kong government condemned the legal team for “spreading misinformation”, saying that Lai himself had requested to be kept apart from other inmates.

“The unfounded remarks … are completely fact-twisting and are merely a despicable political manoeuvre with malicious intention,” the government said in a statement.

Robertsons, a Hong Kong law firm representing Lai in the trial, has also brushed off some of the allegations.

“Mr Lai wishes to make known that he has been receiving appropriate medical attention for conditions suffered by him, including diabetes,” the firm said in a statement in September.

“He has access to daylight through the windows in the corridor outside his cell, albeit he cannot see the sky. He exercises for an hour every day in a secure area.”

With Agence France-Presse