David Quinn
Photo: Diego Azubel The Pope must break silence about Chinese human rights abuses, writes David Quinn
As you may have seen in the media, the Chinese government has recently cracked down hard on freedom in Hong Kong by passing a new ‘security’ law. Pope Francis intended noting this in a recent address but decided not to at the last minute.
The reason we know that he intended mentioning the Chinese crackdown in Hong Kong is because journalists received an embargoed press release of the Pope’s planned remarks, but when he actually delivered them, the references to Hong Kong, which were apparently very mild, were gone.
It seems clear from this little incident that Rome is very anxious to normalise relations with the government in Beijing.
Historically, communist China has been extremely anti-religious. Under the founder of the Chinese communist state, Mao Tse Tung, Irish missionaries were expelled, or even imprisoned. The ‘underground’ Catholic Church in China, suffered greatly.
After the death of Chairman Mao in 1976, China began to open up to the rest of the world. It has now risen to become the second biggest economy in the world after the United States (it may pass out the US soon).
Compared with the worst periods under Mr Mao, the country is less tyrannous than it was, and religious believers are less persecuted.
Political freedom
For quite a long time now, the West has managed to persuade itself that bit by bit, China would become more and more open, more and more democratic. Western leaders seemed to think that freeing up the economy there would lead to more political freedom.
This is an assumption, or rather a delusion, that we will now have to set to one side for the indefinite future. While it is true that China is freer as a society than it was under Mao, it is by no means free in the way we might understand freedom in the West.
In fact, under its current leader, President Xi Jinping, it has been going backwards. The country has become more authoritarian again.
One of the first signs we had of this was in 2013 when something called ‘Document No. 9’ was produced which condemned what it considers to be Western ideas like constitutional democracy, press freedom and judicial independence.
Most Western countries did not think China was being literal. They managed to convince themselves that somehow the document was window-dressing for domestic purposes. It wasn’t.
The crackdown in Hong Kong is merely an extension of what has happened in the rest of China where a minimum of political dissent is allowed.
Freedom of religion is not recognised in any real sense. Worshippers can practice their faith, but all religions are required to be subservient to the Communist Party. That includes the Catholic Church.
The Vatican appears to have been taken in by the attitude that China was bit by bit transforming itself into a Western-style democracy and therefore has been anxious to end the old mutual suspicion between the Chinese Communist Party and itself.
Beijing has decided that it must crush Muslim culture once and for all…”
This led to an as-yet-to-be-published agreement two years ago between Beijing and the Holy See that basically gives the Chinese Government a very large measure of control over who gets to be a Catholic bishop in China. The move was condemned by members of the persecuted Church in China. They had suffered for their religion and for the independence of the Church. Had they suffered for nothing?
But the attitude of the Holy See seems to be that it is better for the average Catholic in China if relations with Beijing are as normal as possible.
The big question now is whether the price is too high.
Quite aside from the situation in Hong Kong, there is the much worse fate that has befallen Uighur Muslims in the far west of the country. It amounts to the biggest human rights abuse in the world today.
After an outbreak of violence among some Uighurs, Beijing cracked down hard. It has decided that it must crush Uighur Muslim culture once and for all. To this end, it has imprisoned an estimated one million Uighur men in concentration camps where they are undergoing ‘re-education’. Uighur women are undergoing mass sterilisation and sometimes forced abortion.
The former British Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, has compared with treatment of China’s Muslims with the treatment of Jews by Nazi Germany prior to the Holocaust.
Can the Pope really afford to be silent in the face of this?
Arguably, the Pope is now in a position similar to that of Pius XII during World War II. During that war, the concern was that by attacking the Nazi regime too strongly, it would make things worse for both Catholics and Jews. (In the end, of course, things could not get worse for the Jewish people as the worst crime in history was inflicted on them.)
Pius XII has been strongly criticised for not sufficiently standing up to Nazi Germany. He thought he was being prudent.
Does Pope Francis believe he is being prudent by maintaining silence as China’s human rights abuses become ever more undeniable? Does he believe that speaking out will make it worse for China’s five to 10 million Catholics?
On the other hand, if he continues to say nothing, then his personal moral authority will diminish, especially as more Western powers wake up to the true nature of Xi’s China.
At a minimum, it seems to me, he will have to back some of the EU’s expressions of concern about human rights abuse in China. Those statements pull their punches, but they are better than saying nothing. Even allowing for prudential considerations, silence no longer seems a viable, or a moral option for the Holy See or Pope Francis.