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A one-man army waging war on drugs

From December last year through early January, 72-year-old Australian Father John Wotherspoon, of the Order of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, travelled through Latin America last this year with a unique message: No more mules, in a campaign against drug mules to Asia. A mule refers to a drug carrier who smuggles illegal substances from African and Latin American countries for the Asian market.  
 







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Mom, when are you coming home?

“Mom, when are you coming back? When you come back, mother”? The seven-year-old girl repeated the question several times into the tape recorder. 
 
She thinks her mother is working abroad, but in fact, the 44-year-old Brazilian has been in a correctional centre for the past three years on the other side of the world after being arrested at Hong Kong International airport with drugs in her luggage. 
 







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A half-way house in Cheung Chau

HONG KONG (SE): A constant visitor to the prisons of Hong Kong, Father John Wotherspoon, has become the inspiration behind the opening of the Mercy Centre, a half-way house for people who have been released from prison and facing difficulties in reestablishing themselves in society.
 
The Australian Oblate of Mary Immaculate priest is a well-known personality among the non-Chinese prison population of Hong Kong and has been a constant campaigner for foreign prisoners, most of whom he says have been convicted of smuggling drugs.
 
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Bishop writes to people in prison

HONG KONG (SE): “The majority of people in Hong Kong prisons eventually are offered the grace of walking through the holy door as an experience of joy after a long sorrow,” Bishop Joseph Ha Chi-shing told a gathering of people who work in the prison ministry held at the cathedral on August 28.

The auxiliary bishop of Hong Kong added that before they get the chance to walk through the big gate to freedom, they must accept the consequences of their crimes.
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