THE SILENCE OF POPE FRANCIS ON COMMUNIST CHINA & HONG KONG

Please follow this link to a 5 minute video of Jimmy Lai,  a sincere  Roman Catholic, a godly man, who laments the failure of Pope Francis to speak up on behalf of Christians in China.   

William McGurn  writes:

Jimmy Lai has embraced his destiny. Last Wednesday the founder of one of Hong Kong’s most popular newspapers, Apple Daily, was arrested on ginned-up fraud charges. On Thursday he was clapped into jail as a national security risk. Thus did a man who started the week a Hong Kong billionaire end it a Chinese dissident.

Mr. Lai’s jailing has provoked condemnation from figures as diverse as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former Soviet refusenik Natan Sharansky and New York Rep. Eliot Engel. They have been joined by journalists, activists and politicians such as the Labour Party’s Sarah Champion and other members of Parliament who on Monday raised Mr. Lai’s plight in Britain’s House of Commons.

But there is one place where China’s bullying elicits only silence: the Vatican. Which is strange, because Jimmy Lai is not only Hong Kong’s most well-known champion of democracy; he is also its most prominent Catholic layman. At a moment when he and his family most need their shepherd, Pope Francis is MIA. . . .

McGurn's article concludes:

In Robert Bolt’s play “A Man for All Seasons,” Thomas More remains silent rather than assent to the oath recognizing King Henry VIII’s second marriage. The Duke of Norfolk asks why the king didn’t just leave More to his silence. The chief minister to the king answers, because “this ‘silence’ of his is bellowing up and down Europe!”

Pope Francis’s silence on China and Jimmy Lai likewise bellows up and down the world. But not in an attractive way.      Read the whole article

** Update:

ABC News:  "Hong Kong's Jimmy Lai denied bail as Pompeo tweets support"

HONG KONG -- Jimmy Lai, the 73-year-old Hong Kong media tycoon and advocate for democracy, was denied bail Saturday after being charged the previous day under the semi-autonomous Chinese territory's new national security law.

Lai faces a charge of collusion with foreign elements to endanger national security, apparently for tweets he made and interviews or commentaries he did with foreign media.

The Apple Daily, a feisty pro-democracy tabloid owned by Lai, said he is accused of asking a foreign country, organization or individual to impose sanctions or engage in other hostile activities against Hong Kong or China.

His case was adjourned to April 16 at the request of prosecutors, who said police needed time to review more than 1,000 tweets and comments made on his Twitter account, the Apple Daily reported.

The newspaper said his charge sheet listed several foreign politicians who followed Lai on Twitter and cited commentaries he wrote and interviews he did with foreign media. . . . 

**  Breitbart News:  "Hong Kong: Anti-Communist Media Mogul Jimmy Lai Facing Decade in Prison"

 The owner of Hong Kong anti-communist newspaper Apple Daily, Jimmy Lai, is facing a minimum of a decade in prison after being charged on Friday with violating the city’s new, and illegal, law against “national security” trespasses.  [my bolding]

Prosecutors charged Lai, 73, under the law’s “foreign intervention” provision for allegedly having conversations with foreigners about the steep decline of respect for human rights in Hong Kong in the past year.

The “national security” law mandates no less than ten years in prison for those convicted of four times of national security crimes: foreign interference, “secession,” “terrorism,” and “subversion of state power.” The law was implemented through Beijing’s National People’s Assembly, which violates Hong Kong’s longstanding policy of “One Country, Two Systems.”  . . . [more...]