The following is part one of Barefoot Lawyer Reports on China interview with Frances Hui, policy and advocacy coordinator for the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong foundation.

Bill Saunders: Welcome to another edition of the Barefoot Lawyer Reports. I’m Bill Saunders. I’m the director of the Center for Human Rights at the Catholic University of America, where Chen Guangcheng is a distinguished fellow. Today I’m speaking with Frances Hui, who I’ll let her tell you about her story, but she is centrally involved in the fight for both democracy and religious freedom in Hong Kong. So welcome, Frances.

Frances Hui: Thank you very much for having me. My name is Frances, and I am currently the policy and advocacy coordinator of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong foundation. We are a 501(c)(3) organization based in Washington and London that advocates for Hong Kong and to call for the release of political prisoners.

I was born and raised in Hong Kong. I grew up in a very free liberal and Catholic environment. I was born after the handover in 1997 and experienced a lot of the major social movements in Hong Kong. I actually left Hong Kong in 2020 after the National Security Law was implemented, mainly because I was heavily involved in advocating for Hong Kong on the international stage, and it can be seen as a crime under the law. So I left Hong Kong in 2020, sought asylum in the US, and finally was granted asylum in the US in 2021. So I’m now based in DC and continue to advocate for Hong Kong and the people and my friends who are currently jailed in Hong Kong, calling for their release and to continue to fight for freedom and expose the truth of the human rights abuses committed by CCP and so forth.

Bill Saunders: Yes of course, we’re very involved in that, and Guangcheng has been very involved in it. We spoke up for the Freedom Movement and the Umbrella Movement and everything. It’s sad what happened. Why don’t you kind of tell us what’s happened? There were some questions held by people when they passed the National Security Law of what effect it would have. What effect does it have?

Frances Hui: The National Security Law was basically imposed by the Chinese Government into Hong Kong. And it’s a very vague law that talks about safeguarding national security; but what the law actually does is to crack down on freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, and freedom of press. We have seen the movement happening; in 2019, everyone was on the streets. This is something that Hong Kongers take pride in, that we enjoy the privilege to have to be able to go onto the street, to speak truth, to protest against something, and to talk about different social issues and our opinions.

But after the National Security Law was implemented, all of this was swept away. The civil society is demolished. People are scared to speak up. And because of the chilling effects it has created on the whole society, people are prone to self censorship and in the context of religion, priests are scared of talking about the government in their sermons and they can’t include things like that in their religious education curricula. Many of the religious groups have disbanded after this law because they’re scared of being targeted. The reason behind it is because there are a number of very prominent activists who are targeted. Some of them include persons of faith, and most of them are targeted for their efficacy for human rights and freedom, including Jimmy Lai and Cardinal Zen. Actually, a protestant pastor was sentenced to 13 months in jail simply for his religious work.

This is a law that didn’t really go through any legislative process or any consultation by the public. It was pretty much imposed by the CCP to control and restrict freedom of speech in Hong Kong after they have seen what happened in 2019 and 2020, with the mass protest breaking out and the impact of it is quite substantial to this point. We still have 1700 people who are sitting in jail in Hong Kong, and they’re all political prisoners who were jailed simply for speaking out and fighting for freedom and human rights.

Bill Saunders: Frances, I’m going to hold this up for anybody who’s watching. I have this report, which I think just came out. I believe I got a copy from you recently. January 2024, “Hostile takeover, the CCP and Hong Kong’s religious communities”. This is an investigative report that you wrote for the Hong Kong Freedom Committee. I think one of the things that’s ominous about this report is it indicates that based on what you have investigated, that it’s just going to get worse in Hong Kong.Why don’t you tell us about some of the things that you talk about in this report? What do you think will happen or will be accelerated unless the world steps in and does something? 

Frances Hui: In the report, we talked about how religious freedom is being threatened under CCP’s control, and we looked into four key trends of how religious freedom is being threatened. First, with Beijing’s campaign of sinicization of religion. Second, the impact in education, how that is played out in religion, in education, sermons, religious activities, and human rights advocacy. Also, the direct attack on persons of faith and these religious organizations. Sinicization of religion was first introduced by Xi Jinping in 2015, and it requires religious groups to align with Communist doctrine, customs, and morality. A lot of times it can be easily misinterpreted as enculturation, which is an idea that we will adapt a religion to an indigenous culture, to the local culture there. For example, we have our Lady of China, which speaks to the Chinese faithful.

But then in reality, sinicization, it’s more about anchoring CCP’s ideology within the faith. So I think it’s important for us to think of China as an atheist regime. The only reason that they are keeping religion around is because they want to use the influence of religious communities to basically propagate their political agenda. In order to do that, they have to tighten control over religion, these religious groups, and to basically transform these faiths into a more acceptable version of doctrines, and then have the religious leaders and persons of faith to adopt them. So we see that is happening in Hong Kong through education, through engagement with Chinese counterparts, and through infiltration.

All of them are to influence theological discourse and neutralize the differences and values to advance their political goal. We all know that the Church in Hong Kong has been kind of playing a role as a bridge church between the faithful in China, the Vatican, and basically the international community. I think this role of being a rich church is going to eventually be restricted because of how the CCP is trying to take over the religious communities in Hong Kong to their side. We also see that now with the introduction of Article 23, which is a new National Security bBill that they’re trying to pass in the very near future.

They are trying to restrict the freedom of people; in particular, they published the details of the bill. Priests can be jailed for up to 14 years for basically refusing to disclose information in confessions. Specifically, if they know about any intents of treason and they refuse to share about it to authorities, they can be jailed for 14 years. It’s a great threat to the church because it’s something the confidentiality of conversations we talk about in confessions are a strict rule for all the priests. In the Anglican church, they also have the same rule that priests cannot share any of the things that they learned about during confessions to other people. We see that being greatly threatened right now. We know that Article 23 is absolutely going to pass maybe this week or next week. We hope that the international community can be more aware of this, that we are really coming to the endpoint of a free religious environment in Hong Kong.

It’s something that not a lot of people discussed in the past. I think we all have seen activists being arrested in jail for their human rights efficacy, and we tend to disentangle it from religious freedom and thinking that people can still go to church, they can still practice their faith in Hong Kong, there are still mosques and churches in Hong Kong, meaning religious freedom is still intact. But in fact, we found that throughout my research, I talked to many people who are basically directly affected by the National Security Law. They range from teachers teaching at school, teaching about religious education, and priests to serve in different roles in the church, and people who participate in religious organizations; all of them have talked to me and a lot of them talk to me anonymously because they’re scared of the consequences. But all of them told me about how scared they are how they’re really worried about the future of the church in Hong Kong. And eventually, priests might have to they might have to register with the Catholic Patriotic Association and to take oath of fidelity to the government.

The Catholic University of America’s Center for Human Rights has published a documentary on the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights. The documentary features world class human rights experts, from former State Department officials to ambassadors and human rights activists. It can be found on our website at catholic.edu/chr