The jailed media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai has been awarded Deutsche Welle’s freedom of speech award for his contribution to Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement.

The German public broadcaster said on Thursday that Lai would be presented in absentia with the 12th iteration of the award on 23 June at the DW Global Media Forum in Bonn.

Deutsche Welle’s director general, Barbara Massing, praised the 78-year-old founder of the now-shuttered news outlet Apple Daily for standing “unwaveringly for press freedom in Hong Kong at great personal risk”.

“With Apple Daily, he gave journalists a platform for free reporting and a voice to the democracy movement in Hong Kong,” she said. “His commitment reminds us that press freedom is never a given – it must be constantly defended. With the DW freedom of speech award, we honour his indispensable dedication to democratic values.”

Lai, a British citizen, was one of Hong Kong’s most prominent and vocal pro-democracy advocates before his imprisonment. He provided financial backing to democratic parties and politicians and took part in mass protests against Beijing’s rule in 2019 and 2020.

Authorities arrested Lai in 2020, accusing him of using the Apple Daily and his political connections to lobby for foreign governments to impose sanctions on China and Hong Kong.

A Hong Kong court sentenced him to 20 years in prison in February on charges that include “conspiracy to collaborate with foreign forces” and publishing “seditious material”. He was convicted under the city’s draconian national security law, imposed by the Chinese Communist party in 2020.

The ruling was condemned as politically motivated by rights groups and the British government, with Human Rights Watch warning that the length of his sentence amounted to “effectively a death sentence”.

Lai’s conviction was the culmination of a years-long saga that critics say represents Hong Kong’s transformation from a largely free city after its return to China in 1997 – following more than 150 years of British rule – to one where dissent is fiercely suppressed.

Beijing says the imposition of the law was necessary to restore stability to the city.

Lai, who was born in southern China in 1947 and fled to Hong Kong in 1960, said he owed “everything to the people of Hong Kong” and that a prison term would be “redemption” for the “wonderful life” the territory had given him.

Additional reporting from Yu-chen Li.