China’s assimilationist policies in Tibet as well as its stringent religious restrictions have been condemned in the latest report on EU-China relations Report adopted by the EU Parliament.

The report says the assimilationist policies violate the educational, religious, cultural and linguistic rights of the Tibetan people and ultimately threaten to eradicate Tibetan culture and identity.

In particular, the report calls for immediate abolition of the compulsory forced-assimilation boarding schools and preschools in Tibet and urges sanctions against Chinese officials responsible for designing and implementing the system.

The report also condemns China’s promulgation of the “Administrative Measures for Religious Activity Venues” also known as “Order number 19”, which came into force on Sep 1 this year. Its aim is to further curtail religious freedom in Tibet and across China. It urges China to respect and guarantee the right to freedom of religion or belief and refrain from monitoring, harassing, detaining or intimidating leaders and members of religious groups both online and offline.

A lawyer representing embattled Catholic democracy activist Jimmy Lai said the Hong Konger is unlikely to receive a fair trial in the legal system that is now controlled by Chinese Communist Party authorities.

Lai’s trial in Hong Kong began this week. He was originally arrested in August 2020 under that year’s controversial national security law, which was passed by China’s communist-controlled government and sharply curtailed free speech in the region.

Lai has been imprisoned for over 1,000 days under the law. He has been accused of colluding with foreign adversaries and conspiracy to defraud and is facing a possible life sentence.

Jonathan Price, a human rights lawyer with the U.K.-based Doughty Street Chambers, told “EWTN News Nightly” that Hong Kong — long a separate administrative region from the mainland Chinese government — is “now more or less indistinguishable from China.”

“The judges in Jimmy Lai’s national security law trial … are handpicked judges, licensed, in effect, to try national security law cases because of their political fealty to Beijing,” Price told Sabol.

“So in those circumstances, it is not how you or I would recognize fair judicial proceedings,” he said.

Crosses at the entrances of Bavaria’s administrative buildings can stay up, a German court has ruled.

In 2018, Bavarian state premier Markus Söder ordered that all public buildings prominently hang a cross “as an expression of Bavaria’s historical and cultural character.”

A Bavarian lobby group advocating “the meaningful separation of church and state as well as the eradication of church privileges,”, challenged the decree in court.

It argued the move infringed on people’s freedom of religion and violated the state’s obligation to be neutral on such matters.

The court, however, found that the regulation was a “mere administrative regulation with no external legal effect and therefore did not violate any rights of the plaintiffs.”

The court said that while “the crosses brought in do display a central symbol of the Christian faith to an objective observer,” they nevertheless had no legal impact on visitors’ religious freedom.

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-bavaria-can-hang-crosses-in-state-buildings/a-67769430

China had witnessed big growth in Christianity in the 1980s and 1990s when past communist restrictions on the practice of religion were relaxed.

This week’s survey, however, found that growth come to a virtual standstill in recent years. Between 2010 and 2018 the number of adults identifying as Christian held steady at about 2% and in 2021 fell to 1%.

Nina Shea, senior fellow and director of the Centre for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute, told CNA that the declining numbers of China’s Christians are “no surprise.”

“They correlate with Xi’s [Jinping’s] crackdown on Christianity, his so-called ‘Sinicization’ campaign,” she said. For the past five years, “the state has strictly banned all children from any exposure to religion, churches have been blanketed with facial recognition surveillance and linked to social credit scores.”

Approximately 55.8% of Chileans voted against it while 44.2% supported it. In 2021, 62pc of Chileans had voted against a proposed Constitution that would have been far more ideologically on the left.

The proposed constitution spanned nearly 200 pages and contained more than 200 articles.

Article 1 of the proposed constitution declares in part that “the family is the fundamental nucleus of society” and “it is the duty of the State and society to protect families and promote their strengthening.”

The proposal featured a lengthy list of fundamental rights and freedoms, beginning with “the right to life.” In addition to asserting that “the law protects the life of the unborn,” Article 16 of the proposed document also prohibited the death penalty.

Chile first began taking steps to repeal the nationwide ban on abortion in 2016. If approved, the proposal would have had the effect of overturning the repeal by establishing protections for unborn life.

The list of rights and freedoms also declared that “the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion” is “guaranteed.”

The number of Irish journalists declaring no religious affiliation, 55%, is four times higher than the general population at 14%, a Dublin City University study found.

Of the 35% who declared an affiliation, the vast majority (89%) identified as Catholic and 4% as Church of Ireland. Non-denominational Christianity, Quaker, Hindu and Buddhist were also noted by a small number.

‘Religious groups and institutions’ are considered the least influential factor/source for Irish journalists, with just 1% saying they are ‘very/extremely influential’, 17% saying ‘slightly/moderately influential’, and 48% saying ‘not influential’.

The remaining 34% of respondents said they were not relevant to their work or did not answer, the study ‘Irish Journalists at Work’ shows.

The study also shows that Irish journalists are overwhelmingly left-leaning in their political outlook, with 61% of journalists identifying as ‘fairly/very’ left wing or ‘slightly’ left of centre.

A new study has claimed that the cost to employ someone to do the work of a stay-at-home parent would be around €54,000 per year.

The research is from life insurance and pension provider Royal London Ireland and shows the estimated stay-at-home salary is up from 2022’s €53,480.

The yearly ‘Stay-at-Home Parent Survey’ reveals that more than 90% of people underestimate the monetary value of a stay-at-home parent with only 8% valuing the job at over €50k.

The survey of 1,000 adults estimated the potential salary of a stay-at-home parent at an average of €30,547 in 2023, which represents an increase of €2,087 compared to 2022.

A Harvard professor and founder of Boston IVF, Dr. Merle Berger, is being sued for allegedly inseminating a woman with his own sperm instead of an anonymous donor.

Sarah Depoian and her husband went to receive the treatment in 1980 and Berger allegedly promised “to perform an insemination using the sperm of a medical resident who resembled her husband, who did not know her, and whom she did not know. With that understanding, Ms. Depoian consented to the insemination.”

The donor-conceived child, Bester, now 42, used a home DNA test earlier this year and found that Dr. Berger was her biological father.

Tánaiste Micheál Martin told the Dáil Thursday that he’s “very open” to giving “very serious consideration” to the recommendations contained in abortion law review.
These include totally decriminalising abortion, watering down conscience rights, and, scrapping the three-day wait before an abortion.

He did however add the following caution: “We can’t dismiss the fact that we put certain arguments before the people at a given time, not so long ago, and people voted on the basis of those arguments.”

“That said, the review was also contained within the [Termination of Pregnancy] Act,” he added. “We’ve had the review now and we will act on the review and Government will give that active consideration.”

A series of targeted attacks on a Catholic church and convent by the Israeli military in Gaza has been vociferously condemned by the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

In a statement, the patriarchate said that, “a sniper of the [Israeli Defense Force] murdered two Christian women inside the Holy Family parish in Gaza, where the majority of Christian families have taken refuge since the start of the war.”

“No warning was given, no notification was provided. They were shot in cold blood inside the premises of the parish, where there are no belligerents,” the statement said.

More than 600 people are currently sheltering in Holy Family Catholic parish in Gaza, including most of the city’s small Christian minority, having sought refuge in convents and places of worship.

The patriarchate also said a rocket from an IDF tank “targeted” the convent where the Missionaries of Charity, the order founded by Mother Teresa, live, which is part of the church compound and which is home to 54 disabled persons.

Despite being designated as a place of worship since the beginning of the current war, the convent’s generator, its only source of electricity, and its fuel stores were destroyed, and the house itself was damaged by the “explosion and massive fire” resulting from the rocket.

The disabled persons living there are now “displaced” and do not have access to the respirators in the convent “that some of them need to survive.”