If you’d like a sneak peek at what life will be like for the people of Hong Kong once the mainland Chinese government fully takes over control of the city, you can find an example this week in the news coming out of the city of Xinxiang. The Chinese Communist Party recently implemented even more restrictions on the practice of any religion, forcing all Catholic priests and other religious leaders to formally register with the government before conducting any services. A group of seven priests and nearly a dozen seminary students were arrested last week and shipped off to political reeducation camps for “reprogramming.” This may sound like a story from some dystopian horror movie, but it’s playing out right before the eyes of the world in China. (Free Beacon)
China arrested several Catholic priests and students and sent them to “political sessions” for reprogramming as part of the Communist leadership’s crackdown on religious activity.
Approximately 100 policemen surrounded a factory that served as a seminary and arrested 7 priests and 10 students, according to Asia News. The arrests occurred on May 20 in the city of Xinxiang in the Henan province. The arrests took place just days before a week of prayer was scheduled to begin on May 23.
One day after the arrests, Chinese authorities took the bishop of Xinxiang, 63-year-old Joseph Zhang Weizhu, into custody. The government made the arrests under new regulations that require any Catholic leaders to register with the government before conducting services.
The Apostolic Prefecture of Xinxiang has a number of “underground” Bishops that have been quietly approved of by the Vatican but are not recognized by the CCP. Joseph Zhang Weizhu was one of them, but he has now “disappeared.”
Most of the anti-religion headlines in China recently have focused on the Muslim Uyghur population, but as this story shows, the CCP is going after any and all religious institutions. The country has long since driven the Buddhists into exile. The state is the only god recognized in China, and those who fail to toe the line have been subjected to imprisonment, torture, forced sterilization, and even murder.
This is the face of the country that so much of the world has been eager to do business with for decades. China has sought to project an image of modernizing itself by driving an economic revolution and taking control of global supply chains. They’ve also been modernizing their military and expanding their space program to the point where they recently became only the second nation to successfully land a rover on Mars.
But all of this is simply propaganda to improve their image abroad and expand their geopolitical influence. Underneath it all, the CCP is still the same old communist party that it’s been since its inception. The government treats its own citizens like cattle and its leaders have no regard for human rights or the needs of anyone but themselves.
Seeing these priests being thrown into internment camps should bring condemnation down on China from all civilized nations around the globe. And it should also serve as a useful reminder of what the true fruits of communism are. Once you surrender all of your rights and individual liberties to the state, this is how the story eventually ends. And if you don’t think this can happen in other countries, you haven’t been paying attention to history.
