Hong Kong

Those who left office cited personal reasons as the cause of their departure or Hong Kong’s changed situation after Beijing imposed its security law. Hong Kong’s Deputy Secretary for Justice, Horace Cheung Kwok-kwan, blames the resignations on “inappropriate pressure” from the West.

Hong Kong authorities had previously denied a work permit to Louise Delmotte, a French photographer working for the Associated Press. Last year she took a picture of the Catholic businessman and pro-democracy activist in handcuffs. The Immigration Department, which now requires flight operators to send information on arriving passengers, has not provided an official explanation.

Mark Clifford and Gordon Crovitz, senior officials at Next Digital, filed a complaint against the global accounting firm. They allege BDO enabled rights violations by providing essential services to Hong Kong authorities. The case casts more than a shadow on the "assistance" the company provided to the government in muzzling critical voices.

Some construction workers have had their salaries cut by half by recruitment agencies. Local union also blames a property market downturn for the suspension of a scheme that brought in almost 10,000 non-local workers.

The editors of the newspaper (already forced to close like the Apple Daily) Chung Pui-kuen and Patrick Lam face up to two years in prison in a verdict expected by September. The ruling is likely to have further profound implications for press freedom in Hong Kong. For the police chief, it is proof of the ‘necessity and legality’ of the crackdown on activists and critical voices. Reporters sans Frontières: 28 journalists prosecuted since 2020.

The exhibition tells “a very different story" about the unrest and the "colour" revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan. Unlike the narratives in the Western media, the protests were not demands for freedom, but attacks on security and order, while Xi Jinping stressed “social stability” as a “prerequisite for building a strong and prosperous China”.

After two days of competition, Asian fencers take home three out of four gold medals. This sport is increasingly popular in South Korea and Japan, while it is set to become Hong Kong’s national sport. Vivian Kong Mai-wai's victory in the women's epee follows that of Edgar Cheung Ka-long, who emerged as Hong Kong’s star with gold in the men's foil at Tokyo 2020.

The PIME missionary from Italy today began a hunger strike in front of the government headquarter, Admiralty district. He is moved by the injustice inflicted upon an African immigrant’s daughter and hundreds of prisoners jailed for crimes of opinion. “It is as if the problem does not exist,” he laments, noting that freeing them would create a climate of trust.

The region’s legislature passed a new law that changes the role of the regulator, who can now deregister social workers who supported the pro-democracy movement. Hong Kong’s welfare secretary called for the depoliticisation of the sector after so many social workers backed the 2019 demonstrations. The most vulnerable will pay for this in a society where the exodus of young families is creating an emergency for seniors.

James Shin Ka-leung will be ordained on Saturday in Westminster. He was already training for this ministry when he left Hong Kong and his profession as a lawyer in 2021, like thousands of his fellow citizens fleeing Beijing’s repression. He will coordinate the pastoral care of Catholic migrants from Hong Kong for the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales.

A hundred scholars from “greater China" met at the University of Saint Joseph to share thoughts from an ecclesial perspective. Archbishop Savio Hon praised the encounter with the local culture, which owes a lot to the work of Card Celso Costantini a century ago. Prof Wang Meixiu expressed concerns over today's restrictions on the access of children and minors to places of worship. She wonders whether the “number of Catholics is decreasing”.

Even those who claim to have no creed engage in some form of ancestor worship, burning incense and leaving offerings at temples, this according to a report just released by the Pew Research Center on Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Vietnam. The study highlights the difficulties of investigation in view of the local notion of religion, which in local languages is often associated only with hierarchical organisations. The rate of religious switching is higher in this region than anywhere else in the world.