An emotional plea was made by Apple Daily publisher Jimmy Lai, as he was jailed for a further concurrent 13 months.

“I share glory of Tiananmen dead,” he write in a wrote in a mitigation letter read out by his lawyer.

He is already serving 20 months on three illegal assembly convictions related to his role in the Hong Kong students’ protest as the Beijing government seeks to silence dissent after the 2019 protests.

The new sentence relates to his role in a vigil for victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, at which the 74-year-old lit candles for the dead. He was convicted last week of inciting and taking part in an unlawful assembly.

The full statement read, “If commemorating those who died because of injustice is a crime, then inflict on me that crime and let me suffer the punishment … so I may share the burden and glory of those young men and women who shed their blood on 4 June.”

Lai’s Hong Kong Apple Daily, launched in 1995, has already been forced to close after its assets were seized, and there are fears the Taiwan edition may suffer the same fate.

With the staff of Apple Daily Hong Kong, he was the winners of this year’s WAN-Iifra Golden Pen of Freedom award.