Hong Kong Forgotten – Free Cardinal Zen – Where Are Jimmy Lai, Denise Ho, Martin Lee, and Grandma Wong?
In 2019, the people of Hong Kong waged a heroic 6-month battle against the mighty Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This battle was crushed in 2020 when the CCP’s imposed a National Security Law that eviscerated the rule of law in the world’s 3rd largest capital market, once a citadel of liberty and a sanctuary for refugees escaping the CCP’s totalitarian police state. Western media has conveniently buried this story, the CCP’s annihilation of Hong Kong is normalized and ignored by western elites, as Hong Kong’s democrats are thrown into prison and put on trial for defending the rule of law, freedom of speech and the right to assembly.
Hong Kong Freedom Fighters fill the streets of Central and Kowloon, 2019
Hong Kong 2019 - Tiananmen Tank Man 1989 - CPP Police Beat, Torture, and Arrest Hong Kong Protestors
In May 2022, Hong Kong’s Chief Executive, CCP stooge John Lee arrested protest leaders Jimmy Lai, Martin Lee, Claudia Mo, Denise Ho, Margaret Ng, Grandma Wong, and more than 10,000 Hong Kong citizens, for such crimes of “endangering state security” “organizing and participating in an unauthorized assembly” “conspiring to print, publish, sell, offer for sale, distribute, display and/or reproduce seditious publications.”
Jimmy Lai, founder of the Giordano fashion empire with his newspaper Big Apple Daily, Hong Kong Democratic leaders Martin Lee and Claudia Mo
Hong Kong’s Grandma Wong and Cantonese Pop Star Denise Ho, jailed by CCP
On May 11, 2022, Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, the 90-year-old Bishop emeritus of Hong Kong, the most senior Chinese hierarch ever arrested by the CCP, was thrown into jail for “conspiracy to collude with foreign forces.” In September 2022, Cardinal Zen was put on trial for managing the "612 Humanitarian Relief Fund" a trust that paid legal and medical fees of protesters arrested during the 2019 pro-democracy, anti-CCP protests. Cardinal Zen pleaded not guilty, and on October 17th, 2022, he was seen ushered into court, with his long walking stick.
This was barely noted in US corporate media.
Cardinal Zen, Pope Francis and CCP backed Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee
What is most shocking about the arrest and trial of Cardinal Zen is the deafening silence from the Vatican. Pope Francis has refused to defend Cardinal Zen, stating that the cardinal “says what he feels” and freedom has “limitations.” Pope Francis has also been dead silent about the CCP’s Uyghur genocide and the CCP’s persecution of Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, and Falun Gong adherents. Pope Francis has made clear which side he is on; in 2018, the Vatican heralded a “historic” agreement with the CCP, finalized in September 2022, which putatively allows the Vatican to collaborate with the CCP on the appointment of Bishops. In 2018, CCP dictator Xi Jingping ushered in a new era of religious repression, termed “Sinicization”, wherein Chinese Catholics are forced to join the CCP’s “Patriotic Catholic Church” and submit to a pledge of “independence” from foreign powers. Chinese bishops are surveilled, subject to CCP indoctrination and required to include “Xi Jingping Thought” in their sermons. The Vatican has dismissed the CCP’s assault on people of faith, insisting that its goals in the agreement are “limited and achievable.”
In 2020 Cardinal Zen said that Pope Francis was not familiar with "communists in power…I try to explain, remembering that Pope Francis comes from South America, where the communists are the good guys defending the poor from the oppression of military regimes in collusion with the rich, so he may have sympathy for them. He doesn’t have direct experience of communists in power, oppressors of peoples."
Xi Jingping addresses the CCP’s 20th National Congress in Beijing, Oct. 16th 2022
On October 16, 2022, Xi Jingping secured his status as Dictator for Life during the CCP’s 20th National Congress. In a 2-hour speech, Xi firmly stated that the CCP will “take all measures necessary against interference by outside forces” on the issue of Taiwan, and "In the face of turbulent developments in Hong Kong, the central government exercised its overall jurisdiction over the special administrative region as prescribed by China's Constitution and the basic law of the Hong Kong special administrative region.” Xinhua, the CCP’s propaganda mouthpiece, quoted Xi as saying Hong Kong is now governed by "patriots" after the "order" was restored in the region.
It is now painfully apparent that the west’s strategy of “constructive engagement” with Communist China has not produced the promised outcome of political reform. Western elites have willingly normalized the CCP’s totalitarian governance, concentration camps, secret police, religious persecution, censorship, assured that Coca Cola and the internet will eventually conjure democracy. Doug Schoen, author of “The End of Democracy” notes: “In hindsight, this assumption was incredibly naïve.”
In June 2019, the US –China Committee of 100 sent an open letter to the White House, the US Congress, and The Washington Post, with the headline: "China is not an enemy", which stated: “Although we are very troubled by Beijing's recent behavior, which requires a strong response, we also believe that many US actions are contributing directly to the downward spiral in relations." That’s a novel spin, when US companies are pushing hard to invest $500 billion of US government pensions funds in Hikvision, a Chinese military company. It would not be incorrect to say that this is treasonous.
Henry Kissinger, architect of appeasement, with CCP luminaries at the Committee of 100 annual Washington DC Gala, 2019, and the committee’s corporate media sponsors
So, what do the signatories of this open letter – many of them retired diplomats, senators, governors - have to say about the trial of Cardinal Zen and the death of Hong Kong? So far, nothing that’s made it to Twitter.
Do the holy men in the Vatican, the pampered diplomats of the Committee of 100 and the wealthy titans of Wall Street think that playing nice with the CCP will end well for the west? Or do they truly believe that the CCP’s genocidal dictatorship is superior to representative democracy?
Throughout the 2019 protests, I watched in awe as the brave people of Hong Kong stood up to the CCP, and I created these art pieces to commemorate the freedom fighters. Today thousands of these men and women are trapped in CCP prisons. The Vatican and western corporate elites of the Committee of 100 have chosen to disregard the plight of Hong Kong, but we the people shall not forget Cardinal Zen, Jimmy Lai, Martin Lee, Claudia Mo, Denise Ho, Joshua Wong, and Grandma Wong, we stand with the people of Hong Kong, and we condemn their tormentors in the CCP.
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