A lawyer representing embattled Catholic democracy activist Jimmy Lai said the Hong Konger is unlikely to receive a fair trial in the legal system that is now controlled by Chinese Communist Party authorities.

Lai’s trial in Hong Kong began this week. He was originally arrested in August 2020 under that year’s controversial national security law, which was passed by China’s communist-controlled government and sharply curtailed free speech in the region.

Lai has been imprisoned for over 1,000 days under the law. He has been accused of colluding with foreign adversaries and conspiracy to defraud and is facing a possible life sentence.

Jonathan Price, a human rights lawyer with the U.K.-based Doughty Street Chambers, told “EWTN News Nightly” that Hong Kong — long a separate administrative region from the mainland Chinese government — is “now more or less indistinguishable from China.”

“The judges in Jimmy Lai’s national security law trial … are handpicked judges, licensed, in effect, to try national security law cases because of their political fealty to Beijing,” Price told Sabol.

“So in those circumstances, it is not how you or I would recognize fair judicial proceedings,” he said.