SAUTEDE’S CASE | Macau and HK scholars want to meet Vatican’s representative

Seven academics from Hong Kong and Macau are seeking a meeting with the Vatican’s representative in Hong Kong regarding the sacking of Eric Sautede from the University of Saint Joseph (USJ).
The rector Peter Stilwell had stated earlier that the decision to end the contract of the senior lecturer of Asian Politics last month was related to his regular commentary on public affairs in local media, including the Times, where he publishes a column.
“We want to expose the situation and we hope to correct what has been done,” Martin Chung Chi-kei, a former USJ scholar who presently works at Hong Kong Baptist University, told the South China Morning Post.
The move follows two petitions against the dismissal that were initiated by alumni and local Catholic teachers. At least one of them was presented to Macau Bishop D. José Lai, who presides over the Catholic Foundation of Higher Education, the body that runs the university.
Separately, Hong Kong University professor Frank Dikotter commented to the newspaper Ponto Final yesterday on the fact that a lecture he conducted in Macau presenting his latest book, “The Tragedy of Liberation,” was one of the causes for Sautede’s (the lecture organizer) sacking, since the scholar didn’t follow a request to suspend the event.
According to the researcher of Mao Zedong’s life, the exact same lecture had been made a week before in Hong Kong’s Book Fair by invitation of the HKSAR Trade and Industry Department.
“Honestly, it seems ridiculous. Whoever told Eric Sautede that my lecture should be cancelled hasn’t got any idea about politics in Macau and China. That person reacted in a moment of panic; it’s a typical example of someone who has gone too far doing something that he thought would be the best thing to do,” Dikotter said.
The author of “Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62” added: “I see with great irony the fact that my book, ‘Tragedy of Liberation,’ devotes half a chapter to what happened in China after 1949. Many people fought for the Catholic Church and kept their faith. It is extraordinary that in an environment like the one felt during the fifties so many people – from common believers to Church leaders – were so brave to fight a repressive power. And now, 70 years later, there is a Catholic University ceding because someone gave a lecture about events that occurred in the fifties?” PB