Prosecuting Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai for an offense under the draconian national security law is likely intended to warn Hongkongers against discussing local affairs with foreign political figures, said Alan Leong, leader of the Civic Party and a former lawmaker.

Lai was charged on Friday with colluding with foreign forces under the law’s article 29, paragraph four, a source told Apple Daily. This makes it an offense to advocate for imposing sanctions or blockade, or to engage in other hostile activities against Hong Kong.

Lai, 73, was accused of lobbying overseas for sanctions between July 1 and Dec. 1, in the first prosecution of its kind. He faces up to life imprisonment if found guilty.

The police may be using Lai’s discussions with foreign political figures on Twitter, his interviews with overseas media, or his calls for support for Hong Kong from the international community as evidence of collusion, Leong said.

Prosecution on the grounds of Lai’s public comments is a form of political suppression, said Ray Chan, also a former opposition lawmaker. The regime’s refusal to accept even public discussions may drive Hongkongers’ engagement with the outside world underground, Chan said.

Lai is set to appear in court on Saturday. He is now in custody pending an April hearing over a separate fraud charge.

Although Lai had called on the U.S. and other western countries to support Hong Kong’s fight for democracy and freedom, he also argued that Washington should retain the city’s special trading and political privileges in order to protect Hong Kong’s value for being different from the rest of China.

“The city needs those special ties, so it can keep standing apart from the mainland and have at least some economic edge over it,” he wrote in an article published by the New York Times on May 29. “Removing those privileges would only make Hong Kong more dependent on China.”

But Washington scrapped the status on the same day the piece was published, following the announcement that the national security law would be imposed.

Lai reiterated his stance in an interview with CNBC on June 4. “By taking away Hong Kong’s special status, Hong Kong is dead, Hong Kong is no longer Hong Kong — because the residual value of Hong Kong in the eyes of the international community and in the Chinese regime’s eyes is totally gone,” Lai said.

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