Cardinal Joseph Zen is among six Hong Kongers nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for championing human rights in the city.
Four American members of congress have proposed the group, which includes the newspaper publisher Jimmy Lai and the democracy activist Joshua Wong, “because they are ardent champions of Hong Kong’s autonomy, human rights and the rule of law”.
A statement from the Congressional Executive Commission on China said: “The nominees are representative of millions of Hong Kongers who peacefully opposed the steady erosion of the city’s democratic freedoms by the Hong Kong government and the government of the People’s Republic of China.”
The other nominees are Toynee Chow Hang-tung, a lawyer prosecuted for commemorating the Tiananmen Square massacre, Gywneth Ho Kwai-lam, a journalist, and Lee Cheuk-yan, a trade unionist.
The human rights campaigner Benedict Rogers, who founded Hong Kong Watch, told The Tablet that “the nomination captures the breadth and scale of the crackdown in Hong Kong, across multiple sectors including law, politics, media, trade unions, civil society and religion”.
It also reflected “the extraordinary courage of Hong Kongers”, he said.
“This nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize is extremely welcome and wholly deserved,” said Mr Rogers, “both for the individuals who have been nominated and for Hong Kong’s fight for freedom.”
Cardinal Zen, who was recently hospitalised after returning from Rome, was arrested last year and convicted for improperly registering a humanitarian fund, established to support participants in Hong Kong’s 2019 democracy protests with medical and legal bills.
Jimmy Lai, a Catholic business magnate, published the pro-democracy paper Apple Daily until it was closed by the authorities in June 2021. He has been imprisoned since December 2020, and was sentenced last December to a further five years and nine months.
Gwyneth Lo, Lee Cheuk and Joshua Wong all face charges for national security offences under recently-introduced legislation.
Their nomination comes from a bipartisan group of US politicians: the Republican Representative Christopher Smith, chair of the commission, and the Democrat co-chair Senator Jeff Merkley, along with former chairs Representative James P McGovern and Senator Marco Rubio, respectively a Democrat and a Republican.
Members of national assemblies are among the persons permitted to make nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize under the Nobel Foundation’s statutes.
The nominators said that they “seek to honour all those in Hong Kong whose bravery and determination in the face of repression has inspired the world”.
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