Scottish Christian.com

Home > News > Scottish Christian News Monitor

Bishop Joseph Devine attacks Chinese regime

A senior Roman Catholic bishop has provoked a political row by comparing the Beijing Olympics to the Berlin Games held under the Nazi regime.

Joseph Devine, the Bishop of Motherwell, branded the Chinese government an "inhuman regime" and "ruthless dictatorship" comparable with Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. "Not since the 1936 Berlin Games in Nazi Germany has the Olympic Games been held in a country where arbitrary executions, imprisonment without trial, secret surveillance by security forces, torture and persecution have been so brutally perpetrated by the regime in power," he said.

Devine added that the Games would be used for propaganda by China's communist rulers to "propagate lies to disguise their inhuman regime".

"Let us use that same tool to expose them for what they are - ruthless dictators who have committed the most evil atrocities not only against their own people but who have been implicitly involved with murderous regimes in Darfur and Burma," he said.

Devine also accused the Chinese government of "state-sponsored" killings in Tibet, which he said they had "turned into a prison".

Full story and reaction at the Sunday Times.