Religious freedom in Hong Kong is facing dangerous threats from the Chinese Communist Party, warned the the Revd Jonathan Aitken, as Chinese President Xi Jinping marked the 25th anniversary of the city’s handover from Britain.
‘The skies are darkening for religious freedom in Hong Kong,’ said the former cabinet minister and MP, now a church minister.
He said ‘there are increasingly ominous signs’ that religious freedom in Hong Kong is ‘next on the hit list by the destructive forces’ of Xi’s regime. Hong Kong’s National Security Law, which was imposed by the communist regime two years ago, can leave fundamental freedoms ‘almost completely dismantled’.
The law has four categories of crimes: secession, subversion of state power, local terrorist activities, and collaborating with external foreign forces to endanger national security.
The rule of law, Aitken said, ‘has been undermined and any meaningful autonomy has been eroded’. Many former lawmakers are in prison and Beijing has ‘brutally curtailed’ press freedom, academic freedom and freedom of expression, he added.
