Ambiguity has been created in the way Hong Kong's pro-Beijing authorities use the national security law. This has sown "confusion over what could be said and what could not", says Bishop Stephen Chow Sau-yan (pictured).

Such a situation is an obstacle for those who want to heal society's wounds, he says.

In the interview, Chow calls on Hongkongers not to give up; rather, "Sit and watch the clouds rise," he advises. "It's time to discern instead of taking action."

"The difficulty of the national security law lies in not knowing where the red line is. Educators, social workers, and even legal professionals face barriers," the bishop says.

"Experts and law enforcers might have a different understanding [of the law].

"Everyone needed to know where the boundaries were so they would know how to express themselves".

With respect to how the crackdown following the 2019 anti-government protests divided Hong Kong's own Catholic community, Chow urges everyone to play a role in reconciling a deeply wounded society.

He says the Catholic Church is doing its bit and is not lying "flat" and doing nothing in the wake of the social unrest and introduction of the national security law, Chow reports.

"Its institutions and members increased support for young people in jail, by providing education and rehabilitation."

Calling for patience to heal the wounds of political divisions and deep distrust in society, Chow urges people to adjust their attitude towards others.

"Hong Kong's biggest crisis now is that different groups only think of their own interests," he says.

Healing "requires each of us to listen and communicate with each other".

Asked about relations with Beijing and the renewal of the Agreement with the Holy See on episcopal appointments, Chow says in the interview he hoped to visit the bishops of mainland China and establish ties.

The task entrusted to Hong Kong by John Paul II is to link China's Catholic community with the universal Church, he adds.

"We hope to have more chances to talk and listen. Don't worry about brainwashing, [which] implies that we are just brainless."

Chow finished saying arrangements made to meet Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu fell through after Lee fell ill with COVID.

"I hope he gained the spirit and breadth of mind in Wah Yan," Chow says. "I understand that he is subject to many political constraints, but it's good if he is willing to communicate."

Source

• Asia News

Give young people a reason to trust authority, Bishop Stephen Chow of Hong Kong suggests in a special message published last Friday.

Among the advantages he lists is a greater sense of unity in a pluralistic Hong Kong.

Hong Kong's past 25 years as a Special Administrative Region "have been very challenging," he says.

At the same time he acknowledges "the goodness, generosity and resilience we have witnessed among the people of Hong Kong."

Chow also offered prayers for young people. He asked God to bless those struggling "with empathic understanding and meaningful support from the others".

He also prayed youth would be empowered by support allowing them "to have dreams again". He hoped they would be able to "make positive differences for their future and that of Hong Kong".

He closed pledging his faith in God and asking for God to bestow "abundant blessings on China and the Chinese People".

Since June 2020, hundreds of Hong Kong activists have been arrested in the crackdown. They include prominent Catholic figures like Cardinal Joseph Zen who is 90 years old..

In March Monsignor Javier Herrera-Corona, the Vatican's unofficial representative in Hong Kong, referenced a national security crackdown by Beijing on Hong Kong in the wake of anti-government protests in 2019.

He told the city's 50-odd Catholic missions the freedoms they had enjoyed for decades were over and warned missionary colleagues to protect their missions' property, files and funds.

"Change is coming, and you'd better be prepared," Corona warned the missionaries. One says in short Corona warned: "Hong Kong is not the great Catholic beachhead it was."

The Rev. Jonathan Aitken, a former UK Cabinet minister, says religious freedom in Hong Kong is "next on the hit list by the destructive forces" of Chinese President Xi Jinping's regime.

He says Xi and his regime are particularly hostile to faith groups.

China's crackdown on Christians on the mainland is leaving them facing the worst persecution since Mao's Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, Aitken claims.

He says persecution of Tibetan Buddhists, Falun Gong practitioners and Hui Muslims has intensified. He also says China's persecution of Uyghurs is increasingly being recognised by international critics as genocide.

Source

• U.S. News
• Crux Now
• Crux Now

Several countries, including the UK, have criticised China for imposing new security laws, which they say threaten the territory's long-standing autonomy.

Facebook said it would stop considering the requests, "pending further assessment" of the human rights issues.

No personal information about users in the region was held at or disclosed from its Hong Kong office, it added.

"We believe freedom of expression is a fundamental human right and support the right of people to express themselves without fear for their safety or other repercussions," Facebook said. Read more

The Church says the political repression of those demanding democratic rights in the China-administered region is wrong.

Hong Kong police arrested 15 pro-democracy activists last weekend, including former legislators because of their roles in Hong Kong's mass protests last year.

They have all released on bail but will appear in court on 16 May.

The Hong Kong diocese's Justice and Peace Commission says the arrests in the city-state, which functions under the Chinese communist regime, was part of "political repression."

All arrests should be stopped until an independent commission of inquiry and its subsequent report has been issued, the Justice and Peace Commission says.

So far, Police have arrested about 7,000 people in connection with riots and violence since the pro-democracy protests began last June.

Most are young students.

However, the latest arrests included former legislators, including 81-year-old Martin Lee, a former barrister, legislator and founder of the Democratic Party.

The Justice and Peace Commission has asked the government to repeal the Public Order Ordinance.

This law, enacted during Hong Kong's British colonial rule, considers more than three people gathering without Police permission as "unauthorized."

The repealing of the 1967 law, which has been amended 26 times, is needed to "restore Hong Kong people's freedom of procession and assembly," the Justice and Peace Commission says.

It also asked police to "return the mobile phones of all arrested persons to ensure their privacy."

The latest police move is considered the biggest crackdown on the pro-democracy movement since the anti-government protests started last June.

The pro-democracy activists were protesting against the now-scrapped extradition bill, which proposed sending suspects to mainland China for trial.

Democracy activists saw the bill as the latest of a series of moves that were shrinking their democratic rights.

An official of the Security Bureau told media that they acted after an investigation proved that the arrested people had violated the law because they organized and participated in unlawful gatherings.

All people are equal before the law and no one can break the law without facing the consequences, he says.

Many activists suspect the arrests are part of the Chinese communist regime's aim to stifle this September's legislative elections.

"They are doing whatever they can to try to silence, to take down, the local opposition," one says.

The US, Britain and Australia have condemned the arrests.

Source

• UCA News
• The Tablet
• Image: Al Jazeera

The deal will end a long struggle between Beijing's Communist rulers and the pope over who chooses the leaders of Catholicism in China.

"It is a baby step by China toward recognising some of the framework of the Western world," said Francesco Sisci, an Italian who teaches international relations at China Renmin University in Beijing.

"It doesn't go as far as recognizing what we in the West call religious freedom but it is a degree of religious autonomy."

Not everyone is in favour of the deal, however.

Some U.S. diplomats, for example, are concerned Francis is conceding a strong influence over church leadership to an avowedly atheist authoritarian regime.

"This is a strange step backward on terrain over which the church has fought, not for centuries but millennia," said Sandro Magister, a Vatican expert who writes for Italy's L'Espresso magazine.

"The church has managed to free itself from control of sovereigns and governments on ecclesiastical matters such as the naming of bishops, but now this achievement is clamorously contradicted by the agreement with China."

Beijing and the Vatican are close to signing the deal, even though the Chinese government has recently intensified a crackdown on Christians and other religious groups. It has been closing churches and removing religious symbols such as crosses and the domes of mosques.

China's estimated 10 million Catholics are legally supposed to worship only in churches approved by the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, a state-controlled body not recognised by the Vatican. Many Catholics attend unregistered churches in underground communities led by bishops loyal only to Rome.

Nonetheless, Beijing is eager for the publicity boost that mending ties with the Vatican would bring.

Source

• The Wall Street Journal
• Forbes
• Image: Tibetan Review

They think the Vatican and Chinese government's plan to sign an agreement about appointing bishops will mean legitimate bishops will have to step down in favour of state-appointed ones.

The agreement, which is only "a few months" away, would allow the Vatican to help appoint bishops in China.

At the same time, Chinese authorities will be given more control over the country's underground churches.

These underground churches, which offer an alternative to state-sanctioned churches approved by Beijing, recognise only the Vatican's authority.

The Beijing-approved state churches refuse to accept the Pope's authority.

Chinese Catholics are concerned about the future of seven "illicit" government-backed Chinese bishops. At present, these bishops are not recognised by the Holy See and have been excommunicated.

Two bishops in Shantou and Mindong dioceses, who have been recognised by the Holy See have been asked to make way for illicit ones.

"We know that China and Vatican have been actively engaged in a dialogue, but we never expected that legitimate bishops would be asked to step down," says a Chinese Catholic who refuses to be named.

She says in exchange for the agreement signed by the Holy See with the government, "the underground community needs to be sanctified."

"Our faith tells us that God so loved the world that everything was best arranged by Him and He can bring good from evil, but now what is our future?

"Where is the church? And who is the shepherd? It is a burden for Catholics to have the game of politics imposed on them."

The woman says the Holy See's decision will make many Catholics leave the church as they "have no choice but to obey".

An underground priest has also expressed concern. He says it's a mistake for the Holy See to assume it can achieve unity by supporting the Communist Party-controlled Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association.

It's "... like asking the underground church to take communion with the devil". He says the underground church feels abandoned and betrayed.

Another underground Catholic says he thinks the Holy See is in a united front with China's communist government.

Father John of Yunnan says the Holy See is in a hurry to establish relations with Chinese authorities.

With the Holy See being "blessed and generous to bishops of the association but not to bishops of underground churches," he says it's obvious underground bishops will transfer to open churches.

• The Tablet
• UCA News
• Image: Asia News

The protesters are calling for democratic elections in Hong Kong, demanding the right to vote for a leader of their choice in 2017, without restrictions from Beijing.

But some commentators see a broader struggle to protect Hong Kong's culture from China's communist government, as it increases its influence on the city.

Christianity has been a visible element of the demonstrations, with prayer groups and crosses seen, and protesters reading Bibles in the street.

Hong Kong's former bishop, Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, said the fight for democracy is "a question of the whole culture, the whole way of living, in this our city".

Beijing's influence through Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying "brings to Hong Kong the whole culture which is now reigning in China, a culture of falsity, of dishonesty, a lack of spiritual values", Cardinal Zen told the Wall Street Journal.

"We can see that it is coming, so we have to resist."

Some see the gap between Christians and the Chinese government as unbridgeable.

"Christians, by definition, don't trust the communists. The communists suppress Christians wherever they are," said Joseph Cheng, a political-science professor at City University of Hong Kong and a supporter of the protesters.

Hong Kong's major church organisations have taken largely neutral stances toward the Occupy Central movement.

Cardinal John Tong issued a brief statement last week urging the Hong Kong government to exercise "restraint in deployment of force" and telling protesters to be "calm" in voicing their grievances.

A spokesperson for the city's Anglican Church said in July that it wouldn't encourage its parishioners to break the law.

Bui in July, 2013, Hong Kong Catholic diocese issued a statement urging that "the Chief Executive shall be directly elected by universal suffrage in 2017 - on a one person, one vote basis".

Some churches are providing aid to protesters and some of leaders of the demonstration movements are Christians.

Last week, the Hong Kong Federation of Catholic Students criticised the police's excessive use of violence when dispersing "unarmed students".

Mr Leung announced on Saturday that "all necessary actions" would be taken to ensure the protesters were removed by Monday morning and order restored.

On Sunday, blockades of official buildings began to be eased.

Sources

• Wall Street Journal
• The Tablet
• Voice of America
• The Guardian
• New York Times
• Image: Wall Street Journal

"You (the Chinese communists) can tie me up, can take me away, chop my head off, but not as a slave," said the cardinal in an online radio programme on June 12.

Hong Kong people should "not succumb to fate but maintain one's own dignity", the cardinal said, warning that "if we kneel down, everything will be finished".

China's State Council released the white paper on June 11, emphasising its total control over Hong Kong.

The policy statement said "the high degree of autonomy enjoyed by Hong Kong is subject to the central government's authorisation. There is no such thing called 'residual power' for the special administrative region".

The document sparked widespread discontent among Hong Kong residents.

This was because it appeared to break the promise of 50 years of autonomy given to Hong Kong after the former British colony was returned to China in 1997.

The cardinal called on people to vote in a June 20-22 non-official referendum on universal suffrage for the election of the chief executive in 2017 and to show their aspiration for full democracy.

The referendum was proposed by organisers of Occupy Central, who vow to bring the city's financial hub to a standstill if the government fails to produce a plan for democratic rule in Hong Kong.

"There is no space for compromise. Our bottom line is to use a nonviolent approach," said the cardinal.

On June 14, Cardinal Zen, 82, began an 84-hour march for democracy around the territory to encourage people to participate in the upcoming referendum.

More than 50 Catholics were expected to walk with him each day until June 20.

"He walked on the frontline to fight for a better life for the next generation. Shouldn't we fight for ourselves for a life that we want to live?" said a young woman on why she will walk alongside the cardinal.

Public nomination for chief executive in Hong Kong has been vetoed by Beijing as against the city's mini-constitution.

This has led to concerns pro-democracy candidates will be screened out.

Sources

• UCA News
• South China Morning Post
• Image: Ejinsight