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subdued but inevitable acceptance into the WTO has taken a backseat
to more immediate concerns involving the war against terrorism.
As the Bush administration focuses on building coalition partners,
the State Department has dutifully issued its congressionally mandated
Report
on International Religious Freedom. Press coverage of religious-persecution
issues in Afghanistan has overshadowed the attention given in this
annual report to so many of the other countries that tolerate and
sponsor religious persecution — like China.
Though signing
on with the antiterrorism coalition, China has only stepped up its
own persecution of Muslims. It has intensified suppression of Muslims
in Xinjiang by claiming that doing so will keep Islamic extremists
from gaining a foothold in China's backyard. The report states,
"After a series of violent incidents in Xinjiang beginning
in 1997 and continuing into 2000, including reported bombings in
Xinjiang and other parts of the country attributed to Uighur separatists,
police cracked down on Muslim religious activity and places of worship
accused of supporting separatism in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region."
Turdi Ghoja
of the Uyghur American Association insists, "China wants to
take advantage of the global war on terrorism to legitimize its
indulgence in killing, torturing and imprisoning Uyghurs. Beijing
has already unleashed a terror campaign against Uyghurs to 'stamp
out the separatist elements in Xinjiang.' Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous
Region Communist Party boss Wang Lequan was quoted by the China
News Service on October 24 as saying a high-pressure, strike-hard
campaign in which the government would maintain the 'attack initiative,
strike early, and deal with the punishment later' would continue.
Apparently, China saw the international climate as an opportunity
to make the execution list longer this year, without causing too
much criticism from the international communities."
One example
of the blurring of the PRC's suppression of Islamic militants and
religious persecution was reported in a September 26 article in
the Times of London, "Alcohol is final insult for the
condemned." The ongoing fight for an independent Islamic state
in the predominantly Turkic province of Xinjiang, in northwestern
China, resulted in a death sentence for two prisoners. Before arriving
at the execution site, hundreds of PRC officials conducted a political
rally before truckloads of Islamic prisoners — a scene described
as a "ghoulish spectacle." "Islamic militants faced
the execution squad yesterday, stupefied by drink and driven to
their deaths on an open lorry past laughing crowds... They did not
realise they would face the executioner within the hour. As a final
insult to their faith, they had been fed alcohol with their last
meal."
Under the subheading of Restrictions on Religious Freedom, the report
confirms: "During the period covered by this report, the Government's
respect for religious freedom and freedom of conscience worsened,
especially for some unregistered religious groups and spiritual
movements such as the Falun Gong. The Government intensified its
repression of groups that it determined to be 'cults' in general,
and of the Falun Gong. ...Separately, under the guise of urban renewal
and cracking down on unregistered places of worship, authorities
in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Providence, razed an unknown number of churches
and temples in late 2000. However, official persecution of underground
Catholic and Protestant groups in southeastern China eased somewhat
over the past year."
The report
states that the Chinese government continued, and in some places
intensified, a national campaign to enforce 1994 State Council regulations
(and subsequent provincial regulations) that require all places
of religious activity to register with government religious-affairs
bureaus and come under the supervision of official, "patriotic"
religious organizations. In many parts of the country, the atmosphere
created by the nationwide campaign against Falun Gong had a spillover
effect on unregistered churches, temples, and mosques.
Media coverage
of horrific prison conditions for Falun Gong members confirms the
report's findings. The Chinese press reported about Mr. Yau, a 50-year-old
man who was arrested and imprisoned on April 28 for distributing
Falun Gong material. While in prison, "He was forced to assemble
leaves for Christmas trees and inmates would be hit five times for
every leaf that failed to pass the quality inspection test. He said
he witnessed an inmate being slapped in the face 25 times for making
five substandard leaves and an additional two slaps for forgetting
to say 'thank you' after receiving the punishment."
One Falun Gong
practitioner, Chen Gang, worked for the Beijing office of Carlsberg
Brewery. He was arrested, tortured, and remains in prison for being
a Falun Gong practitioner. In response to the State Department report,
Mr. Chen's sister, Ying Chen — a native-born Chinese woman
who now lives in New Jersey-stated: "The appalling crimes that
have been committed toward Falun Gong practitioners, and that have
gone unpunished and actually rewarded have been far more horrendous
than the notorious acts of the Japanese soldiers when they invaded
China!"
The government
of China has arrested many leaders of the unofficial Roman Catholic
and Protestant "house church" movements. Provincial officials
confiscated or destroyed up to 3,000 unregistered church buildings
and Buddhist shrines in one district alone, in southeastern China
last November. Government control over the official Protestant and
Catholic churches has increased, as officials interfere in the training,
ordination, and assignment of clergy.
Continuing
efforts to negotiate with the Vatican also ignore the blatancy of
the continued persecution of Roman Catholics inside China. "The
Government's refusal to allow the official Catholic Church to recognize
the authority of the Papacy in matters of faith and morals has led
many Catholics to reject joining the official Catholic Church on
the grounds that this denies one of the fundamental tenets of their
faith. Catholic priests in the official church also face dilemmas
when asked by parishioners whether they should follow Church doctrine
about birth control or State family planning policy. This dilemma
is particularly acute when discussing abortion."
Father Matthew
Koo is a Chinese priest who spent ten years in China's prisons,
followed by 19 more years in China's laogai camps, for his
dedication to the Vatican. Now living in the United States, Father
Koo reflected on the state of religious affairs in China and explained
how Roman Catholics in China still have no freedom to worship God
publicly. He compares the celebration of Mass in China to that of
the early Church. Yet he is hopeful that Communism will not be forever:
"We must wait and pray and work at our ministry," he stated.
Some Protestant
house-church groups reported in mid 2000 that police detentions
and raids of worship services were more frequent than in previous
years. In early August, 2000, police detained 31 members of an underground
Protestant church in Hubei's Guangshui City. A week later, twelve
members of an underground Protestant church in Henan were arrested.
In late August, 2000, police arrested 130 members of a house church
headquartered in Fangcheng City, Henan, after they held services
with three American members of a Protestant fellowship organization.
Earlier this
year, California's Channel One program, "Faith in Hiding,"
documented hundreds of ministers and Evangelical Christians inside
China demonstrating the power of faith. They believe that China's
government sees religion as a threat and that it presumes the possibility
of revolt. Under China's laws, no one under 18 is permitted to practice
religion, and preachers must neither speak of the Second Coming
of Christ, nor evangelize. House-church Christians expect that preaching
the Gospel risks persecution; they risked their lives to appear
in the video. Five underground church leaders told the story of
a 21-year-old minister who was arrested for preaching, severely
beaten, then suspended in air with his hands tied behind his back.
He died on October 15, 2000.
In February,
2001, the Tibetan Information Network published a comprehensive
study listing a total of 197 Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns detained
in China, a majority of whom were imprisoned in the Tibetan Autonomous
Region (TAR). In April, 2000, the director of the TAR Prison Administration
Bureau told a visiting foreign delegation that there were over 100
monks and nuns in the TAR's three prisons, of whom 90 percent were
incarcerated for "endangering state security."
In March, 2001,
Chinese officials refused to meet with U.S. diplomats from the Department
of State's Office of International Religious Freedom, during their
visit to China to examine the situation of religious liberty. Nevertheless,
U.S. officials in Washington and Beijing continued to protest Chinese
government actions to curb religious freedom, including the destruction
of unregistered places of worship in Wenzhou, the arrests of followers
of Falun Gong, the crackdowns on Tibetan Buddhists and Uighur Muslims
in Xinjiang, and the arrests of Christian ministers and believers.
The lack of improvement in religious freedom in China was a key
factor in the United States's decision to introduce again a resolution
critical of China's human rights record at the U.N. Human Rights
Commission in Geneva.
At a time when
the world's attention is focused on Afghanistan, we must hope that
this administration will not forsake its principles elsewhere. As
President Bush said earlier this year, "It is not an accident
that freedom of religion is one of the central freedoms in our Bill
of Rights. It is the first freedom of the human soul — the
right to speak the words that God places in our mouths. We must
stand for that freedom in our country. We must speak for that freedom
in the world."
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