Close. Xi says his Hong Kong polity has ‘wide approval’ around the world at anniversary handover ceremony

Religious freedom in Hong Kong faces dangerous threats from the Chinese Communist Party, Reverend Jonathan Aitken warned as Chinese President Xi Jinping celebrated the 25th anniversary of the city’s handover from Britain to China.

“The skies are darkening for religious freedom in Hong Kong,” said Aitken, an Anglican priest and former cabinet minister and member of parliament, during a speech at the National Club in London on Wednesday, UCA News reported.

Aitken, 79, said “there are increasingly worrying signs” that religious freedom in Hong Kong is “next on the list of casualties by the destructive forces” of Xi’s regime.

Hong Kong’s national security law, which was imposed by the communist regime two years ago, may leave basic freedoms “almost completely dismantled”, Aitken said.

The law provides for four categories of crimes: inheritance, subversion of state power, local terrorist activities, and collaborating with foreign or external foreign forces to endanger national security.

“The law also positions Beijing above Hong Kong’s judicial system in cases deemed to be related to national security,” US group China Aid reported earlier. “This means that the judges in these cases must be approved by Beijing. Hong Kong residents can now also be taken to China, where they will face a courtroom with allegiance to the government.

The rule of law, Aitken said, “has been undermined and any meaningful autonomy has been eroded”. Many former lawmakers are in jail and Beijing has “brutally restricted” press freedom, academic freedom and freedom of speech, he added.

In 1997, China agreed to a “one country, two systems” agreement to grant certain freedoms to Hong Kong when it regained the city from British control. Critics argue that the security law undermines the promised autonomy.

“Today, a quarter of a century after the handover, the whole world has witnessed the Chinese communist regime systematically breaking those promises and violating the treaty,” he added.

President Xi said on Friday that the city’s political system as it currently exists “must be respected for the long term”, signaling that China plans to preserve the political model, according to the BBC, which added that the public was mostly made up of pro-Beijing. elite.

“‘One country, two systems’ has been tested and proven over and over again, and there is no reason to change such a good system,” he said, adding that the system benefits from “the unanimous approval” from residents and “widespread approval” from World Leaders. Xi further asserted that Hong Kong’s “true democracy began” when mainland China regained control.

Xi also defended the policy of allowing only “patriots” to run for office in Hong Kong, saying it was “essential to safeguard Hong Kong’s long-term stability and security.”

“No people in any country or region of the world would ever allow political power to fall into the hands of forces or individuals who dislike, or even sell out or betray, their own country,” he said. .

Describing Xi as “ideologically a Marxist nationalist and politically a brutal control freak”, Aitken said his regime was particularly hostile to religious groups.

The Chinese communist government is committing genocide against the Uyghurs (a Muslim ethnic minority) of about 12 million people heavily concentrated in the western province of Xinjiang, Dr Richard Land, President Emeritus and Assistant Professor of Theology and Ethics at Southern Evangelical Seminary, wrote in a recent column for The Christian Post.

“It is estimated that more than one million residents of China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region were detained in internment camps for the alleged purpose of ‘re-education’ and ‘de-radicalization,'” Land wrote, who also served as editor and columnist for The Christian Post since 2011. “Those who fled the region spoke of the horrors of forced abortions and torture. There is no doubt that the impetus for this crime against humanity has started at the top of the CCP’s food chain.

China has also been frequently accused of rights abuses against other religious minorities, including Christians, Tibetan Buddhists and Falun Gong practitioners.

Open Doors USA, which covers persecution in more than 60 countries, estimates that China has more than 97 million Christians, many of whom worship in unregistered or so-called “illegal” underground churches.

The five state-sanctioned religious groups in China are the Buddhist Association of China, the Chinese Taoist Association, the Islamic Association of China, the Three-Self Protestant Patriotic Movement, and the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association.

Even organizations within the five permitted religions are subject to oversight and limitations.

Internet censorship targeting Christians in China, including government-sanctioned Christian groups, is severe.

In April, a well-known Christian website disappeared after serving believers for about 21 years.

In March, it was reported that Chinese authorities had launched a mass training program for more than 100 “religious content reviewers” to remove non-governmental religious content from the internet.

This “accreditation of more than 100 ‘auditors’ of online religious activities will only further crack down on religious content online and put more Chinese Christians at risk,” the organization warned at the time. American Persecution Watchdog, International Christian Concern.

China has been labeled for years by the US State Department as a “country of particular concern” for gross violations of religious freedom.