Dissident claims Chinese Communist Party pays Vatican $2 billion annually to keep shut [that is, quiet about the persecution of the Uighurs]. — June 29, 2020
That explains it.
“China’s Genocide: Pope Silent, Prelates Speak,” by Jules Gomes, ChurchMilitant.com, August 11, 2020:
ROME (ChurchMilitant.com) – Pope Francis is being slammed for his silence on the genocide of Uighur Muslims after 76 religious leaders condemned China for a “holocaust” of its religious and ethnic minorities.
Two Asian cardinals, a British Catholic bishop and high-profile Catholic priests joined Orthodox, Anglican, Jewish and Muslim leaders in publishing a statement on Friday blasting China’s persecution of Uighurs as “one of the most egregious human tragedies since the Holocaust.”
Cardinal Charles Maung Bo, archbishop of Yangon, Myanmar and president of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC) and Cdl. Ignatius Suharyo, archbishop of Jakarta, drew attention to “the potential genocide” of “one million Uighur and other Muslims in China.”
The persecuted minority “are incarcerated in prison camps facing starvation, torture, murder, sexual violence, slave labor and forced organ extraction,” and “at least 80% of Uighur women of childbearing age” are subjected to “forced sterilization and birth prevention,” the statement said.
Global media and human rights activists noted the conspicuous silence of Pope Francis, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby — a close friend of the pontiff’s — as well as prominent Muslim leaders.
“Pope Francis, in particular, speaks almost every week at the Sunday Angelus, and on many other occasions, about issues of injustice in the world. He has often addressed the persecution of the Rohingya Muslims,” Rahima Mahmut, head of the World Uighur Congress, told Church Militant.
“Yet there is one country whose human rights record he has not highlighted — China — and one people whose suffering he has not spoken about — the Uighurs,” the human rights activist lamented.
“The Pope is one of the world’s most influential and respected spiritual leaders, with a moral authority that can reach every corner of the globe,” Mahmut observed.
“We look to Pope Francis to take a stand, to speak out and offer his prayers and solidarity for the Uighurs facing what amounts to among the worst atrocity crimes since the Holocaust,” she urged.
“After the Holocaust, the world said, ‘Never Again.’ Today, we repeat those words ‘Never Again,’ all over again,” the statement stressed. “We stand with the Uighurs. We also stand with Tibetan Buddhists, Falun Gong practitioners and Christians throughout China who face the worst crackdown on freedom of religion or belief since the Cultural Revolution.”…
Islamic scholar Robert Spencer told Church Militant that “the allegations that the Vatican is being paid a massive sum by the Chinese government could hold the key to why Pope Francis is silent on the persecution of Uighur Muslims.”
“If they paid him, he might speak up on their behalf. But they do not, and the Chinese Communists do. His eye, in this case, appears to be squarely on the bottom line, not on the humanitarian concerns he speaks out about so enthusiastically in other contexts,” the historian lamented.
In June, an Associated Press report confirmed that Uighur women were forced to undergo pregnancy checks and fitted with intrauterine devices or sterilized leading to a form of “demographic genocide.”…