Church in the World

Chinese law will isolate Hong Kong Church, bishop warns

Asia

The Bishop of Hong Kong has said that a new Chinese anti-subversion law will disrupt the relationship between the Church in Hong Kong and that in mainland China. The Bill, which would impose heavy penalties for what Beijing defines as subversion, sedition or treason, is seen as a serious threat to Hong Kong's civil liberties.

Bishop Joseph Zen Ze-kiun described the national security Bill as the biggest challenge to freedom since Hong Kong reverted to China in 1997. He said that while he did not think the law would immediately affect Hong Kong Catholics, they should be concerned over the law's potential threat to religious freedom, he told UCA News, the Asian church news service.

Bishop Zen told a press conference in Hong Kong that the law could not be stopped. 'This is not the time to debate for or against the enactment of the law, because it has become inevitable. Rather, we hope it will be enacted in the best possible way.'

Bishop Zen also accused the government of taking advantage of public anxiety over the Sars virus since March in order to pass the controversial law quietly. |snip!|Ban lifted on vernacular Bible . The Malaysian Government has lifted its ban on a translation of the Bible in the native Iban language, a tongue spoken by an ethnic group in Sarawak province on the island of Borneo. The ban, which was imposed at the start of April, was rescinded at the end of the month after Iban church leaders appealed to Malaysia's acting Prime Minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

Iban speakers, who number around 550,000, are the most populous of Malaysia's indigenous peoples. They were once the most feared of Sarawak's headhunting tribes, and were known as the Sea Dayaks.