Sam Brownback: ‘Release All Religious Prisoners’
During a special briefing on April 2, Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback advocated that religious prisoners immediately be released during this time of coronavirus pandemic, citing the danger of disease spreading in close prison quarters.
“In this time of pandemic, religious prisoners should be released,” he said. “We call on all governments around the world to do so. It’s a good public health move for their nations and it’s morally obviously the right thing to do. We unfortunately have a number of religious prisoners around the world in various countries that are being held, and I just wanted to cite a few of those that are taking place right now.
“…China continues to have a number of people imprisoned for their faith. We know that as far as the situation in Xinjiang, but we also know it happens and it continues to take place with Protestant and Catholic churches, house church and even officially recognized church, and then the Falun Gong members and Tibetan Buddhists have – a number of them are in prison. And again, those should all be released in this time of pandemic.”
While Ambassador Brownback went on to say that anecdotally religious persecution has slowed in many parts of the world due to the pandemic, Friends of Falun Gong has reason to believe that religious persecution in China has not abated. The Chinese regime might even be using the outbreak as further reason to intensify social policing of all sorts. It was recently reported that Chinese doctors touted a double-lung transplant on a coronavirus patient. The organs were procured in an astounding 5 days, pointing to the idea that they were harvested from a living “donor,” very likely a Falun Gong practitioner imprisoned for their faith.