“Despite the Vatican-China agreement on Bishop appointments,” the USCIRF report says, “Chinese authorities continued to harass, detain, and torture underground Catholic bishops—such as Cui Tai and Huang Jintong—who refuse to join the state-backed Catholic association.”
The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom released its annual report this week, saying “the threat to religious freedom remains strong worldwide,” and citing 14 “countries of particular concern” for their “systematic, ongoing, and egregious” violations, including Burma (Myanmar) — where a military coup d’etat took place earlier in the year, China, Eritrea, India, Iran, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Vietnam.
The USCIRF is a government commission created by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, and charged with assessing violations of religious freedom internationally, and making independent policy recommendations to the President, the Secretary of State, and Congress.
This year’s annual report looks back at religious freedom violations as well as progress made in various countries during 2020. A press release from USCIRF noted that during the past year, “many countries used the pretext of the Covid-19 pandemic to aggravate religious discrimination,” singling out China, Nigeria, and India among the worst offenders.
The USCIRF report cites the findings of an Australian study, which identified 380 active detention facilities in China’s Xinjiang province — home to ethnic Uyghur Muslims — indicating that the Chinese government “has continued to detain Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims despite claiming to have released all detainees.”
USCIRF cites widespread reports that Chinese authorities have sent millions of Muslims to the camps since 2017, for offenses ranging from wearing long beards, to refusing alcohol, or exhibiting other behaviors they deem indicative of “religious extremism.”
The US Commission on International Religious Freedom also noted reports of Uyghur forced labor being used in prison and internment camps, factories, and industrial parks in Xianjing. “Moreover,” the USCIRF report stated, “authorities continued to carry out large-scale closures and destruction of Uyghur religious sites, including mosques and shrines important to that community’s religious, ethnic, and cultural identity.”
Reports of torture, rape, sterilization, and other atrocities have come from former detainees, the USCIRF report also notes, saying that experts have raised concerns the Chinese government’s actions in Xinjiang province “could amount to genocide under international law.”
“Despite the Vatican-China agreement on Bishop appointments,” the USCIRF report says, “Chinese authorities continued to harass, detain, and torture underground Catholic bishops—such as Cui Tai and Huang Jintong—who refuse to join the state-backed Catholic association.”
The report says Chines authorities “also harassed, detained, arrested, and imprisoned members of Protestant house churches who refuse to join the state-sanctioned ‘Three-Self Patriotic Movement’ and arrested church pastor Zhao Huaiguo in April, charging him with “inciting subversion of state power.” USCIRF notes the October 2020 arrest of Christian bookseller Chen Yu in Taizhou city, Zhejiang Province, eventually sentencing him to seven years in prison and fining him roughly $30,000 for “illegal business operations.”
USCIRF says the Chinese government also continued to demolish Christian church buildings and crosses under its so-called “sinicization of religion” campaign, and mentions there were reports of Chinese authorities demolishing Mahayana Buddhist, Daoist, and folk religion temples across the country.
The commission recommended that the US State Department designate China and thirteen other countries as “countries of particular concern” with regard to religious freedom. USCIRF also recommended that nine other countries, including Afghanistan, Cuba, Egypt and Turkey, should be placed on the State Department’s “Special Watch List.”
The report noted “positive, although tentative, steps toward religious freedom” had been taken in 2020 by Sudan, the Central African Republic and Bahrain, while observing that in other countries conditions of religious freedom had grown worse.
The USCIRF highlighted a number of positive developments in regard to international advocacy for religious freedom, giving as an example the UN’s International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief, which was observed in 2020 for the second time.
The commission urged US President Joe Biden’s administration to continue to prioritize religious freedom, in continuity with policy of the previous administration. In particular, it called on the government to continue to implement last year’s executive order “Advancing International Religious Freedom,” which calls for foreign aid to promote religious freedom, and integrating religious freedom concerns into US diplomacy.
The USCIRF report was not the only major global survey published this week. Aid to the Church in Need released its Religious Freedom in the World Report 2021 this week, as well. The ACN report also cites China, and notes the alarming rise in Islamic militancy around the world. Like USCIRF, ACN includes China, Nigeria, and India on its list of worst offenders, along with Bangladesh and Pakistan.
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