The Italian PIME missionary took his hunger strike to Admiralty today, in front of the government headquarters, linking the injustice suffered by the daughter of an African immigrant with the hundreds of prisoners held in jail for crimes of opinion. “It is as if the problem did not exist. Let these people regain their freedom in order to re-create a climate of trust.”
Hong Kong () – Father Franco Mella, a PIME missionary who has been involved in numerous battles, returned to public action today with a hunger strike in front of the headquarters of the local administration of Hong Kong, in the central district of Admiralty, to demand “Freedom for all” for political prisoners. It is above all an invitation not to forget the hundreds of activists, including many young people, who have been imprisoned since 2019 due to the harsh repression of protests by pro-democracy movements and under the draconian National Security Law.
Every year at this time, Fr. Franco carries out this gesture of protest and on this occasion he also wants to remember another injustice against a little girl, Alicia, daughter of an immigrant from Uganda. “She was separated from her natural mother, who after her birth had been abandoned by her partner. Despite all the problems due to this trauma, we accompanied her to visit her for years. Until five years ago, when the girl was 9 years old, social services decided to give her up for adoption to an Indian family,” recalls Fr. Mella. “There were two of her aunts willing to take care of her, but the judge did not want to listen to our request to maintain the link with the natural family. They promised that they would keep in touch, but we have not been able to see her since July 11, 2019. Today she is 14 years old and we do not even know where she is. That is why every year, on the anniversary of this forced separation, I add another day to my hunger strike: five days for the five years that have passed since this injustice was committed. And today, the last day of my hunger strike, I also dedicate it to the political prisoners: there are more than a thousand of them in prison for years, without having done anything wrong.”
In these very days, the hearings are taking place in which the lawyers are asking for a reduced sentence for the 47 democrats who were brought to trial only for having dared to organise primary elections in order to obtain the largest number of seats in the Legislative Council. “The lawyers convinced some of them to plead ‘guilty’ in the hope of obtaining a reduced sentence,” continues Fr. Mella. “But the Hong Kong government and that of Beijing should use the tool of amnesty to resolve the problem once and for all. Instead of worrying about the new pair of pandas (Beijing’s gift to Hong Kong on the occasion of July 1, the anniversary of the return to Chinese sovereignty, ed.), the head of the Executive should think about freeing these people and rebuilding a climate in which even those who have left the country can have confidence and return.”
What worries Father Mella most is the fact that he has become accustomed to this situation. “It is as if the problem no longer exists, we talk less and less about it,” he complains. “This evening some relatives of those in prison wrote to me to thank me and say that other voices should be added to mine. Some local journalists came to interview me. They asked me: but after your hunger strike, what can change? I told them that my duty is not to remain silent. My conscience demands it.”
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