On the night of the Hong Kong handover to China, I walked through that great city’s old airport — noting the many residents who sat, passports in hand, preparing to leave. I was leaving after a small international gathering of journalists and academics focused, naturally, on religion and the news.
I talked to a few of the solemn people I saw that night in 1997. Some said they were leaving for good. Others said they were going abroad to explore the legal and economic hurdles they would need to clear if or when they decided to leave. I didn’t hear a single optimistic voice.
Like the people I interviewed for the two “On Religion” columns I researched during that stey, they said that they expected that, in a few years, the Chinese authorities would crack down on dissent, free speech and, yes, some mentioned freedom of religion. Here are those columns: “Silence and tension in Hong Kong” and “Hong Kong II: There’s more to life than $.”
I bring this up because of an important story that is unfolding, in slow motion, in the United Kingdom. Here is the top of a long BBC website story with this headline: “The Hong Kong migrants fleeing to start new lives in the UK.”
The UK will introduce a new visa at the end of January that will give 5.4 million Hong Kong residents — a staggering 70% of the territory's population — the right to come and live in the UK, and eventually become citizens.
It is making this "generous" offer to residents of its former colony because it believes China is undermining Hong Kong's rights and freedoms.
Not everyone will come. Some of those eligible to leave have expressed their determination to stay and continue the fight for democracy.
In the end, Britain estimates that about 300,000 will take up the visa offer over the next five years.
As you would expect, the story introduces a family that is already in the UK, exploring their reasons for making the leap. Any signs of religion here?
Readers are told that Andy Li and his wife Teri Wong moved to York in October, just after the announcement of plans for this policy change. They said, no surprise, that they were thinking about their children, daughter Gudelia, 14, and son Paul, 11.
"We feel that the things we treasure about Hong Kong — our core values — are fading over time," said Mr Li. "So we decided we needed to provide a better opportunity for our children, not only for their education, but also for their futures."
For Mr Li, Britain provides the kind of society — the rule of law, freedom of speech, democratic elections — that he longed for in Hong Kong.
Mrs Wong said she wanted her children to be able to say what they wanted at school, not like in Hong Kong, where they had to be careful. "That's not the life we want them to have," she said.
Others, of course, will leave Hong Kong because they have been involved in human-rights protests in recent years and have faced the wrath of the authorities.
If you have followed GetReligion posts on this topic (click here for a collection), you know that these protests featured many religious themes, images and even Christian praise songs.
The BBC feature does offer the following from one activist who has fled:
One person who did not want to be identified came to Britain recently after taking part in pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong in 2019.
"I fear for the safety and security of the friends and family who decided to stay behind," the 23-year-old told the BBC. "And I am afraid I will also become a target for the Hong Kong authorities because of my active participation in the protests."
So what is missing here? Once again, we have a major report — BBC being one of the planet’s most influential newsrooms — that misses each and every religion angle linked to this important subject.
Example: How many Catholics will leave Hong Kong and how will this affect the UK church? Or this: How many evangelicals and other Protestants will flee who played roles in the many local, regional and even global ministries that for decades have been based in the freewheeling Hong Kong environment?
The new administration of President Joe Biden has shown signs that it will be more welcoming, in terms of allowing those fleeing persecution to enter the United States. What about Hong Kong, which is a sensitive issue for those seeking economic peace with the Chinese authorities.
Why would BBC skip the religion angles in this huge story?
All of this reminds me of the first paragraphs of the very first post — “What we do, why we do it” — here at GetReligion, on Feb. 1, 2004.
Day after day, millions of Americans who frequent pews see ghosts when they pick up their newspapers or turn on television news.
They read stories that are important to their lives, yet they seem to catch fleeting glimpses of other characters or other plots between the lines. There seem to be other ideas or influences hiding there.
One minute they are there. The next they are gone. There are ghosts in there, hiding in the ink and the pixels. Something is missing in the basic facts or perhaps most of the key facts are there, yet some are twisted. Perhaps there are sins of omission, rather than commission.
A lot of these ghosts are, well, holy ghosts. They are facts and stories and faces linked to the power of religious faith.
Yes, this was one of the concepts we discussed at that 1997 mini-conference, although I don’t recall anyone using GetReligion’s familiar “religion ghost” image at that time.
See any ghosts in this poignant, dramatic new story linked to Hong Kong?
Just asking.