Arresting a 90 year-old Cardinal marks a new low for a Chinese Communist Party regime that had already sunk to shocking levels of inhumanity, barbarity, cruelty and mendacity. Cardinal Joseph Zen is, as the last Governor of Hong Kong Lord Patten said yesterday, “one of the most important figures in the Catholic Church in Asia and in the Catholic Church’s advocacy for human rights in China and elsewhere.”
That he was released on bail within a few hours of his arrest is welcome in the circumstances, but he should never have been detained in the first place. Along with three others – popular singer Denise Ho, internationally renowned barrister Margaret Ng and academic Hui Po-keung – Cardinal Zen was arrested because he was a trustee of the 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund. The foundation, shut down by the authorities last year, had been established to assist protesters and political activists with their legal fees. The four have been accused of “collusion with foreign forces” under the draconian National Security Law imposed by Beijing on Hong Kong two years ago.
