Hong Kong’s Ta Kung Pao Attacks and Defames The Church of Almighty God—What Does This Portend?

November 2017, a series of incendiary reports came out of Hong Kong. Ta Kung Pao and Wen Wei Po, both pro-CCP leftist newspapers, published a media onslaught of 17 articles in a frenzied attempt to discredit The Church of Almighty God, a legally registered religious entity in Hong Kong. This kind of media attention occurring in mainland China under the dictatorship of the CCP would not be cause for comment. However, this occurred within the democracy of Hong Kong, supposedly under "one country, two systems." This is truly cause for concern. The freedom of religion is a basic human right protected by international human rights conventions. All democracies around the world acknowledge the freedom of religion, and all citizens in democratic nations strongly uphold this freedom, but this occurrence in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region does not bode well. If the Hong Kong branch of The Church of Almighty God also suffers the CCP's persecution, will Hong Kong's other religious groups be able to avoid this fate? How far do freedom and democracy really go in Hong Kong?