The detention of Next Digital founder Jimmy Lai has drawn widespread coverage on international media as foreign politicians condemn “lawfare” against dissension in Hong Kong.

The media mogul, along with two of his executives, were remanded in custody on Thursday over charges relating to land lease terms governing the Apple Daily newspaper’s headquarters in Tseung Kwan O. Lai is accused of defrauding the land owner by housing his majority-owned private consultancy in the same premises in an industrial complex.

What could have been a civil dispute has been criminalised by the Beijing-backed authorities as they keep up with a campaign to crack down on opposing voices, raising fears that the erosion of freedoms is continuing unabated, critics suggest.

“Straight out of the playbooks of Stalin and Mao: detentions, arrests, intimidation, threats, kangaroo courts,” Lord David Alton of the United Kingdom said in his Twitter account. “Locking up campaigners and detaining Jimmy Lai won’t stop people believing in democracy in Hong Kong but unmasks the jailers for what they are.”

Benedict Rogers, leader of the British-based human rights campaign group Hong Kong Watch, also tweeted:”Totally heartbreaking and yet another illustration of the cruelty engulfing #HongKong.”

His group on Thursday issued a statement saying due process in the rule of law had been neglected in Lai’s detention. “Beijing is using a combination of economic coercion and litigation to starve the pro-democracy movement of funding, and intimidate them into silence,” the statement read.

Solomon Yue, vice chair and chief executive of the Republicans Overseas lobby group, described as “travesty” a Hong Kong court’s move to deny Lai bail.

The judge’s decision to keep Lai locked up until next April, when his case would return to court, was also the subject of lengthy coverage by international media outlets in several countries, including the United States.

The Washington Post quoted Hong Kong-based lawyer and commentator Antony Dapiran as saying on Twitter that Hong Kong authorities were abusing the legal system to crack down on dissent in “lawfare.”

“Classic #HKLawfare: charging this key political opponent with *fraud* for using office space for company secretarial services in breach of lease restrictions. (How many pro-BJ businesspeople are happily engaged in similar “fraud” that will never be investigated?),” his tweet read.

An Apple Daily investigation has linked at least two pro-Beijing businessmen in Hong Kong to the use of industrial premises for other purposes. The authorities have not taken action against them.

Apart from the alleged fraud, Lai also faces prosecution for his involvement in multiple pro-democracy protests last year and for “collusion with foreign governments,” a charge under sweeping national security laws.

His detention came hot on the heels of the jailing of three pro-democracy activists, Joshua Wong, Agnes Chow and Ivan Lam, on Ｗednesday for a protest outside the city’s police headquarters in June last year.

The Wall Street Journal said in an editorial: “Though the fraud charge is not as serious as some of the others he already faces, especially on national security, its purpose is to dirty him up before he goes to trial on the others. In Mr. Lai’s case the decision to arrest him over the terms of a business lease sends the additional message that any charges will do.”

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