Hong Kong’s Newly ‘Elected’ Chief Executive Targets 90-Year-Old Cardinal

Condemnations poured in from around the world on Wednesday as Hong Kong’s newly “elected” chief executive John Lee invoked China’s authoritarian “national security law” to arrest 90-year-old Cardinal Joseph Zen and two other prominent opposition figures.

Lee was installed as chief executive on Sunday in a secret-ballot “election” controlled by Beijing, using an “election committee” stuffed with Communist Party loyalists. Lee, the former Hong Kong security chief behind the infamous extradition law that sparked the 2019 pro-democracy protest movement, was the only candidate on the ballot.

Lee is already under sanctions from the United States for his role in suppressing the 2019 protests. A global alliance of lawmakers, the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), on Monday, urged more free nations to impose sanctions on Lee to hold him accountable for the “shocking police brutality” used against the protesters and his role in enforcing the national security law, “which has outlawed nearly all forms of political opposition in the city.”

The Group of Seven (G7) nations expressed their “grave concern” about the ersatz vote as “part of a continued assault on political pluralism and fundamental freedoms.” 

The concerns of the G7 and IPAC were realized when Cardinal Zen was arrested by Hong Kong national security police on Wednesday, along with former lawmaker Margaret Ng Ngoi-yee and singer Denise Ho Wan-sze. 

The previous day, cultural studies scholar Hui Po-Keung was arrested as he tried to board a plane to Europe, where he had secured an academic posting. Hui was one of many academics who sided with the pro-democracy movement to be forced out of their jobs in Hong Kong schools.

All four of the detainees are prominent opposition figures and trustees in the 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund, which was established to help pro-democracy protesters with medical and psychological aid, legal advice, and emergency financial assistance, including bail money. The fifth trustee of the fund, Cyd Ho Sau-lan, is already in jail for participating in “illegal” demonstrations.

The fund was aggressively forced out of existence by the Beijing-controlled city government; Ng called it a “remarkable achievement for Hong Kong civil society” that it lasted as long as it did. The fund formally shut down in October 2021 but largely suspended activities a month earlier, under intense scrutiny from government investigators who clearly planned to use the national security law as a weapon against organizers and donors.

Cardinal Zen and his colleagues were charged under the odious national security law with “colluding with foreign forces.” As IPAC noted, the law classifies virtually all criticism of Communist rule as subversion and collusion with foreign enemies of China.

“Even by Hong Kong’s recent standards of worsening repression, these arrests represent a shocking escalation. Some of the city’s most respected pro-democracy figures, whose activism has always been entirely peaceful, are now potentially facing years in jail. There could be few more poignant examples of the utter disintegration of human rights in Hong Kong,” Amnesty International (AI) said on Wednesday.

“The trustees’ so-called crime of ‘collusion with foreign forces’ once again highlights how the vagueness of Hong Kong’s national security law can be weaponized to make politically motivated, or simply malicious, arrests,” AI warned.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) called the arrest of Cardian Zen and the other 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund trustees a “shocking new low for Hong Kong, illustrating the city’s free fall in human rights in the past two years.”

The U.S. State Department called for the immediate release of the detainees, saying their arrests have once again demonstrated Hong Kong authorities “will pursue all means necessary to stifle dissent and undercut protected rights and freedoms.”

“Hui Po-keung’s arrest at Hong Kong International Airport prior to his departure further indicates local authorities maintain a politically motivated exit ban on certain residents,” State Department spokesman Ned Price added.

The British government called Cardinal Zen’s arrest “unacceptable” and a further violation of understandings reached with the Chinese government when it took control of Hong Kong from the U.K. in 1997.

“We continue to make clear to mainland China and to Hong Kong authorities our strong opposition to the National Security Law, which is being used to curtail freedom, punish dissent, and shrink the space for opposition free press and civil society,” British minister James Cleverly said.

“The Holy See has learnt the news of Cardinal Zen’s arrest with concern and is following the development of the situation very closely,” the Vatican said in a statement.

Zen had a difference of opinion with the Vatican in 2020, making a public appeal to Pope Francis to keep Communist political influence out of the Catholic church in China. The Vatican made a deal with Beijing in 2018 that agreed to recognize bishops appointed by the Communist Party in exchange for the Party recognizing the Pope’s authority and granting some measure of official indulgence to Catholicism.

Zen butted heads with Church officials on a few other occasions, refusing to compromise his stance against the evil of Communism or stifle his criticism of Beijing so political negotiations could proceed smoothly. 

The Catholic News Agency (CNA) suggested his arrest will “pose a dilemma for the Vatican, which has shied away from public criticism of the crackdown in Hong Kong.” CNA noted that both Hong Kong’s new chief John Lee and his predecessor Carrier Lam are baptized Catholics.