Clean Reverends

I was having breakfast listening to Lau Sai Leung.
He was talking about the “47 35+” suspects still detained without trial for anywhere between one to two years, maybe more.

I was furious.
Not just at the Court, Justice Dept., and Govt.
But primarily at our clean and respected Reverends.

Why did it have to take a self-proclaimed Buddhist to point out the gross injustice?
Was it a secret in HK or no news coverage?
No one knows that an accused person should be given due process and not imprisoned without trial?
For over two years?

Are all Christians deaf, dumb and blind in HK?
Are all Christian lawyers deaf, dumb and blind in HK?
Are all Christian Reverends in HK deaf, dumb and blind?

Maybe not all.
At least Reverend Yuen Tin Yau still speaks.
And at least the Catholic bishop Chen Yat Kwan still speaks.
The others?
Reverends in mega churches like Yan Fook, Alliance Church in North Point—and I can name a few more—are strangely mute.
Reverends who head our seminaries like Evangel, Alliance Bible Seminary, and Baptist, are just as mute.

None of them see the elephant in the room!?

“Come on! Don’t get too upset! Wasn’t it quite clearly set out in ‘Clean Church’, ‘Clean Para-church’ and ‘Clean Professors’?” You may say.

Well.
I once asked my class this.
“In a fully packed MTR car, a heavily pregnant woman comes in. Obviously she is in need of a seat. But all have been taken.
If suddenly someone stands up to yield the seat. Who do you prefer that person to be?
A junkie. A prostitute. A Taoist. A Buddhist. A communist. A Christian. Or your church pastor.
Which?”

Forget their answers.
I wish it would be my church pastor is the first one to offer his seat!
I wish it were Rev Patrick So, Rev Siu Sau Wah, Rev Kwok Man Chee, Rev Choi Siu Kei.
It’s so Christian.
It’s so human.
It’s just right.
After all they preached much loftier topics than just being human.

Unfortunately it was Lau Sai Leung who stood up!

For over two years these “35+” people were jailed, practically so though technically not so, present day scribes may argue.
God knows how their families sustained the loss of breadearners.
God knows what happened to their mortgaged house.
God knows what trauma their children have gone through in their absences.
All these for being at best accused, and at worst persecuted!

In the HK we have known, except for murder suspects, just about all accused should be entitled to bail, however high it could be set.
But no, no in their cases now.
Over two years.
Administrative imprisonment it is.

It is so bad that it drove most of them to want to get it over with and confess to the crime that they were held for but never got to a fair trial.
Anybody who can do simple mathematics can see the reason why.
They have spent the time in jail as if they were convicted and sentenced, without a trial already!
Who wouldn’t want to confess?!
Who wouldn’t want to be reunited with family, to hug them, to enjoy a family meal, and to sleep in own bed?

It took Lau Sai Leung, a self-confessed Buddhist self-exiled KOL to Vancouver to consistently pointed out its injustice and absurdity.
No HK pastors said anything.
They got used to being muted since 2019, on the pretext that politics was not their call, Gospel is.
Granted.
But it is now not about color like yellow or blue.
Neither is it about blackTs vs police.

It is about what is just, right, and human.
It’s like yielding one’s seat to a pregnant woman in a crowded MTR car.
It’s about being human.

A ex-RTHK reporter who once coined a demand that earned her admiration from all average human beings in HK but eventually cost her career, even her abode in HK— now she lives and works in Canada.
What did she coin?

Well, the same I expect from all those named and well known so-called Reverends:
“Talk like a human being!”

Human beings are all unclean, Dear Reverends.