Catholic pilgrims from Hong Kong came to see the pope at the welcome ceremony in Sukhbaatar Square in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia on Sept. 2, 2023. / Credit: Courtney Mares/CNA
Rome Newsroom, Mar 15, 2024 / 16:30 pm (CNA).
The Diocese of Hong Kong on… […]
A drawing of the Crucifixion by imprisoned Catholic and pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai is unveiled by Lai’s godfather, William McGurn, and his wife and daughter at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., Feb. 22, 2024. / Credit: Patrick G. Ryan/The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Feb 23, 2024 / 14:35 pm (CNA).
The Catholic University of America (CUA) in Washington, D.C., has installed a drawing of the Crucifixion by imprisoned Hong Kong Catholic and pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai.
Father Robert Sirico, a supporter and friend of Lai’s, said during the installation ceremony on Thursday that the sketch is a testimony “not just of Jimmy’s struggle but the struggle of all people of Hong Kong” and “all of the people of China, who will, by faith, resist [oppression].”
The large drawing depicts Christ on the cross flanked by eight orange flowers. It was created by Lai in prison, where, according to Sirico, he has been kept in solitary confinement for close to 1,500 days.
The picture was blessed by university chaplain Father Aquinas Guilbeau. It is now on permanent display by the St. Michael the Archangel Chapel in Catholic University’s Busch School of Business.
A successful entrepreneur, newspaper owner, Catholic, and outspoken critic of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Lai has been in a Hong Kong prison since 2020 for his pro-democracy and free speech advocacy.
The activist, a convert to Catholicism, was originally arrested in August 2020 under that year’s controversial national security law, which was passed by China’s communist-controlled government. The law sharply curtailed free speech in Hong Kong in an effort to quash what the Chinese Communist Party considered subversion and sedition in the separately administered region.
The plaque below Lai’s drawing at Catholic University explains that he “cites his Catholic faith as the basis for his refusal to be silenced or flee to save himself from arrest.”
Sirico said that the Hong Kong activist willingly chose to give up his comfortable, affluent life by resisting the CCP and refusing to leave Hong Kong. Although Hong Kongers have for years enjoyed a greater degree of freedom than that found in mainland China, that is now quickly changing as Chinese officials crack down on the region.
“If I go away, I not only give up my destiny, I give up God, I give up my religion, I give up what I believe in,” Lai said in 2020. “I am what I am. I am what I believe. I cannot change it. And if I can’t change it, I have to accept my fate with praise.”
Sirico told CNA that Lai sees his imprisonment as a way of joining in Christ’s passion on the cross. He said that the drawing should serve as an inspiring reminder that the “blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.”
In prison, Sirico said that Lai has devoted himself to religious reading and prayer. He has also begun creating religious drawings, mostly pictures of the Crucifixion, like the one now on display at Catholic University.
CUA has been a vocal supporter of Lai in previous years. In 2022, the university awarded Lai an honorary degree.
Dr. Peter Kilpatrick, Catholic University’s president, told CNA that Lai “represents resistance to real oppression” and that he “represents freedom.”
Kilpatrick said that he hopes students will look at the drawing and learn about Lai and his resistance in Hong Kong and realize that “there are still people in the world who are willing to fight for the truth and who are willing to fight for freedom.”
“I see freedoms being denied all around the world,” Kilpatrick said. “In 2024, we may have to fight harder … not just in Hong Kong, but perhaps right here in the United States, for freedom to worship as we should and must, for the freedom and the dignity of the human person, which is under assault.”
Chen Guangcheng, a world-renowned Chinese human rights activist known commonly as the “barefoot lawyer,” was also at the dedication ceremony. He told CNA that he came to show his support for Lai.
“Jimmy Lai is a good person,” Guangcheng said. “He used his media to see the truth; that is why the CCP persecuted him.”
Guangcheng urged Americans to do more in support of freedom in Hong Kong and mainland China.
“I think if the Western people and government stand with them, the situation still can change,” he said.
Hong Kong.Hong Kong media tycoon and founder of Apple Daily newspaper Jimmy Lai Chee Ying arrives at the West Kowloon Magistrates’ Court, May 18, 2020. / Credit: Yung Chi Wai Derek/Shutterstock
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Feb 13, 2024 / 16:15 pm (CNA).
A religious freedom advocate from Hong Kong is warning that proposed legislation could further restrict religious liberty and lead to the persecution of the Catholic Church and other Christians.
Frances Hui, a Hong Kong native who has political asylum in the United States, expressed concern about the possible enactment of the controversial proposal Article 23, which would expand a 2020 national security law. She made these comments during a Hudson Institute panel discussion on “The Repression of Hong Kong and Heroism of Jimmy Lai.”
Lai, a pro-democracy journalist and convert to Catholicism, was arrested on several charges under Hong Kong’s 2020 national security law and could face life in prison. His newspaper, Apple Daily, frequently published material critical of the Chinese Communist Party. Although the Chinese government charged him with colluding with foreign forces, critics of the prosecution claim that he — and hundreds of other political and religious dissidents — were arrested for their activism.
If enacted, Article 23 would expand the law to bolster the government’s crackdown on political dissidents, which has been ongoing for more than three and a half years.
The change would add new offenses, including a prohibition on external interference in Hong Kong, a prohibition on supporting external intelligence organizations, and a prohibition on electronic and computer activities without lawful authority that endangers national security, along with a prohibition on general sabotage activities, according to the Hong Kong Free Press.
Hui, who serves as the policy and advocacy coordinator at the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, said during the panel that the legislation would “target foreign organizations [and] their activities in Hong Kong,” which could be used against foreign Christian missionaries and Hong Kong Catholic Church communications with the Vatican.
“A lot of the small- to medium-scale church groups, the Catholic Church, and foreign missionaries would all be affected,” Hui said.
“We don’t know how they’re going to use this law to go against religious groups, but having this law passed and imposed in Hong Kong would be a great threat to religious groups in Hong Kong,” she added. “They are subject to legal prosecution. … The Catholic Church in Hong Kong … might have to stop their communication with the Vatican because it’s a foreign state.”
In such a scenario, Hui warned that the Catholic Church in Hong Kong could be forced to join the Catholic Patriotic Association, which the communist government established in 1957 to exert government control of Catholic churches in mainland China.
“We don’t know how they’re going to use this because it’s another vaguely written law, but … if they don’t like what you’re doing and they have targeted you, they have the law at their disposal to use that to threaten you and put you in jail,” Hui said.
The legislation was first proposed more than 20 years ago in 2002, but the effort was rejected after widespread backlash from the people of Hong Kong, journalist associations, and Western governments. The effort, however, was revived by Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu in 2022. On Jan. 30, Lee began a one-month consultation period on the proposal.
“I think this is something the world and the American government should pay attention to and [should] speak up against it,” Hui said.
Nearly 300 people in Hong Kong, including Lai, have been arrested since the government updated the national security law in 2020. Critics believe this is a crackdown on free speech and political opposition.
“The biggest goal of [the national security law] is to stifle dissidents,” Hui said. “It has destroyed freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of the press. It’s a very vaguely written law that pretty much applies to the whole civil society.”
The United States Congressional Executive Commission on China has encouraged President Joe Biden’s administration to issue sanctions against the judges and prosecutors involved in Lai’s case and similar cases.
Member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board William McGurn, who is Lai’s godfather and has known him for decades, said during the panel that he believes Lai would also want people to not forget “the other people locked up that don’t have his name recognition or friendliness with Western reporters and politicians.”
“I think … he stayed in Hong Kong to be with them to choose sides,” McGurn said. “Same with Cardinal [Joseph] Zen … [who] was not prosecuted under the national security charges [but] was on these other charges of organizing a group without official regulatory permission.”
In November 2022, Zen was convicted on charges of failing to register a fund that helped pay for the legal fees and medical treatments of Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters. He has appealed that conviction.
The Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation published a report on Jan. 30 that found that religious freedom is “deteriorating” in the city amid a “hostile takeover” from the Chinese Communist Party.
According to the report, Catholic and other Christian groups have faced accusations of supporting “violent protests” and colluding with “foreign organizations” under the 2020 national security law.
In addition to persecuting Christians, critics have accused the Chinese Communist Party of persecuting Uyghur Muslims and followers of Falun Gong, a religious and political movement.
Catholic pilgrims from Hong Kong came to see the pope at the welcome ceremony in Sukhbaatar Square in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, on Sept. 2, 2023. / Credit: Courtney Mares/CNA
CNA Staff, Feb 6, 2024 / 11:30 am (CNA).
Freedom of religion is “deterio… […]
Hong Kong media tycoon and Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai. / Credit: Napa Institute
CNA Staff, Jan 2, 2024 / 11:10 am (CNA).
Jimmy Lai, the embattled Hong Kong Catholic democracy activist, pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to all charges leveled aga… […]
Jonathan Price, a member of Jimmy Lai’s international legal team, appears on “EWTN News Nightly” with host Tracy Sabol on Dec. 19, 2023. / Credit: EWTN News Nightly
CNA Staff, Dec 20, 2023 / 11:55 am (CNA).
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, which is representing Lai in international matters, told “EWTN News Nightly” host Tracy Sabol on Tuesday that Hong Kong — long a separate administrative region from the mainland Chinese government — is “now more or less indistinguishable from China.”
“Its legal system has been subverted” by the 2020 law, Price said; that law is controlled by a “politically appointed committee” rather than an impartial judiciary.
“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. “And you’ve got to remember as well that recently, the Hong Kong director of national security boasted that the national security law has a 100% conviction rate.”
In “any rule-of-law compliant jurisdiction, that would be a red flag,” Price argued. “It cannot be right that literally everybody accused of a crime is guilty, but that’s how they’ve been operating the national security bill. So I’m afraid we don’t think that he’s likely to receive a fair trial.”
Lai has been vocal in his faith. He was baptized and received into the Church by Cardinal Joseph Zen, bishop emeritus of Hong Kong, in 1997. He said in 2020 that his decision to stay in Hong Kong and place himself in danger was informed by his belief in God.
Price on Tuesday echoed those remarks. He noted that Lai’s faith had “not been made a factor explicitly” in the trial against him. But “no doubt his faith played a part in the conviction with which he pursued his activities,” including pro-democracy activism.
Lai “saw that Chinese authoritarianism would ruin Hong Kong,” Price said. “And he made it his life’s work to try to hold onto the Hong Kong, and the freedoms in Hong Kong, that he loved, and those included the freedom for him to practice his religion.”
“So in many ways, his conviction [meant] that he stayed in Hong Kong when he could have left,” Price said. “He was a man of enormous means and huge international connections” and could easily have left the region to avoid arrest, Price said.
But “he chose to stay, and that is a mark of his conviction, a mark of his faith.”
Lai’s lawyers have asked the court to throw out sedition charges against the Catholic activist. The judges are expected to rule on that request by the end of the week, with the trial itself projected to continue for several months.
Hong Kong media tycoon and Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai. / Napa Institute.
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Dec 18, 2023 / 17:00 pm (CNA).
A congressional commission is urging the United States government to sanction Hong Kong prosecutors and judges… […]
Jimmy Lai at a Hong Kong protest. / Credit: Courtesy of the Acton Institute
CNA Staff, Dec 18, 2023 / 07:00 am (CNA).
The trial for Jimmy Lai, the Catholic Hong Kong activist and newspaper publisher, opened Monday, launching what is expected to… […]
Jimmy Lai at a Hong Kong protest. / Credit: Courtesy of the Acton Institute
Rome Newsroom, Nov 21, 2023 / 16:00 pm (CNA).
A legislative council member from the pro-Beijing New People’s Party has criticized a joint petition signed by 10 Catholic… […]
Archbishop Li Shan of Beijing, president of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, the state-managed Catholic organization in mainland China controlled by the CCP’s United Front Work Department. / Credit: Bundesministerium für Europa, Integ… […]
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