You’re listening to part one of an interview with Zofia Joynt, a first place winner of the 2025 Human Rights Essay Contest, hosted by the Catholic University of America’s Center for Human Rights. The interview is conducted by Dr. William Saunders, director of the Center for Human Rights. To listen to the rest of this interview, check the link in the description or go to humanrights.catholic.edu.
William Saunders: Hi, I’m William Saunders. I’m the director of the Center for Human Rights at Catholic University of America. I’m being joined tonight by Zofia Joynt, who is a graduate student in my Master of Arts and Human Rights program. And in fact, anybody listening who would like to learn more about the program, or maybe you have friends, or children, or others who would be interested in getting this master’s, it looks at human rights from the Catholic perspective. As we’ll talk about in just a minute Zofia did in her paper, but you can come to our website, humanrights.catholic.edu, or you can go to a dedicated webpage, MAHumanRights.com. MA, like Master of Arts, so MAHumanRights.com.
Now, the Center for Human Rights, our distinguished fellow is Chen Guangcheng. That’s why we are on another edition of The Barefoot Lawyer podcast. Of course, Guangcheng is not conducting it tonight, I am. And we had an essay contest, we have one every year. So also, if you’re listening to this, spread the word about that. We want as many students as possible to participate. We have participation at every level: high school, college, graduate school. And we always look at issues having to do with human rights and China.
Now, China is ruled by the Communist Party, so… Which is the Chinese Communist Party, and we’ll say the CCP. And tonight, as we talk, we’ll talk about the CCP, but the contest every year talks about some issue of democracy, human rights, and the Chinese Communist Party, because they threaten democracy here in the US and around the world, and they oppress their people. And as Guangcheng says, they are a threat to the whole human race.
So, we had one this past spring, and Zofia entered an essay, and she was a winner. So first, welcome, Zofia. Glad to have you with us.
Zofia Joynt: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate this opportunity and also the
opportunity of the essay contest.
W: So I have your essay here in front of me. I think it’d be good to just read the first sentence of it. “In Centesimus Annus, Pope Saint John Paul II stakes out the origin point of communist ideology, saying, quote, ‘Thus, the root of modern totalitarianism is to be found in the denial of the transcendent dignity of the human person, who, as the visible image of the invisible God, is therefore, by his very nature, the subject of rights which no one may violate. No individual, group, class, nation, or state.’ The human dignity of those who live under the Chinese Communist Party is being compromised, and the rights to which they are entitled by virtue of being human are quashed.” So again, for the listener, we framed this essay contest last year by saying, “What would you do if you were the Secretary of State who has to advise the president? How should the president react to what the Communist Party’s doing?” So, Zofia, why don’t you tell us what were your thoughts about what you would tell the president?
Z: First of all, I chose this quote from Centesimus Annus because Pope John Paul II was specifically, and from a uniquely in that time period perspective, speaking on totalitarianism and how, you know, the root of it is denial of human dignity and the idea that every human person is created in the image of God with certain indelible rights that can’t be taken away by any person or country or government. And what I wrote in my essay was that, if I were the Secretary
of State, I would just be abdicating and bringing up specific instances and specific people in China that were undergoing abuses by the CCP, because it’s my belief that often bringing to light one particular person can work to uncover a broader system of evil. And so, I specifically brought up the case of Jimmy Lai, who is still in prison under trumped-up charges, and also the Uighurs and other groups of people there being oppressed in China.
W: Tell people who are listening who Jimmy Lai is. Why did you bring him up?
Z: I first became aware of Jimmy Lai through the human rights program and even had the privilege of going to a talk on campus about the book called “Troublemaker” that just came out
about him. And Jimmy Lai, so he’s… Was in prison for four and a half years at the time that
I wrote this essay, so now nearly five. And he escaped China as a child and moved to Hong Kong, and grew up in extreme poverty and made this incredible and fantastic rise as a businessman, and also got into reporting and news, and was therefore targeted by the CCP, especially for his involvement. He kind of started his involvement in speaking out during the protests of students and Tiananmen Square. And after he spoke about these things in his magazine and his newspaper advocating for freedom in Hong Kong, that was and is being threatened. Democracy in Hong Kong is being threatened by the CCP as well. He was arrested and has been mostly in solitary confinement for the past four and a half years for his work and his speech.
W: So if you’re new to this issue, you may not know that just a couple of years [ago] Hong Kong was a free democratic society. China had agreed in a treaty with the United Kingdom that the United Kingdom would release control of Hong Kong but the Chinese Communist Party would agree to respect the democracy in Hong Kong. And within a few years, the Chinese Communist Party started to crack down on democracy, which has now been obliterated and is gone in Hong Kong. So one of the freest, most vibrant countries in the world, certainly the economic heart of Asia, along with Singapore and a couple of other places, has now been crushed. And Jimmy Lai was a billionaire who resisted the CCP and has been in prison for quite a while, as Zofia was saying. Okay, who else did you talk about in your essay?
Z: So I also mentioned the genocide that’s currently being carried out on the Uighurs. Uighurs are a Turkic ethnic group that live in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in Northwest China. And for years now, they’ve been subject to horrific abuses like forced labor, and sterilization, and indoctrination, being forced to learn Mandarin and not practice their religion anymore. So I mentioned them, and also, you know, the forced labor practices are something that, you know, we should be super mindful of, especially considering a lot of those products come into the US. Despite good efforts to block them from coming in, they still do.
So I mentioned the Uighurs. Also, the group Falun Gong has undergone a lot of targeting. They’re a religious group, and also Catholic bishops. So the CCP is very involved in all manner of things, including religion in China, and pressure the Catholic Church to choose or not choose certain bishops.
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 humanrights.catholic.edu.