Jimmy Lai's lawyers have accused China of torturing a former democracy activist to make him confess to a so-called crime, and have asked the UN special rapporteur on torture to take some sort of action.

I can easily believe that China did this, but I don't understand why the article describes this as an "appeal" to the rapporteur. As far as I know, neither that rapporteur nor the UN as a whole has any power to overturn a Chinese court ruling. Chinese courts take their orders from the Chinese state.