Faith communities persecuted in China
thewhig.com
By Geoffrey Johnston
KINGSTON – Freedom of religion, faith, conscience and belief are guaranteed under the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But that has not discouraged China’s Communist overlords from establishing a system that oppresses and brutalizes people of faith.
“Any church that puts their religious practice and their God above the Communist Party is subject to repression,” says Michael Craig, volunteer China coordinator for Amnesty International Canada.
“I think China is one of the most significant religious freedom abusers in the world,” says Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett, vice-chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). The commission is a bipartisan human rights watch dog established jointly by the U.S. president and Congress in 1998.
“China is focused on persecuting a number of groups,” stated Swett in a telephone interview. For example, Christians who do not belong to state-sponsored churches are singled out for harsh repression.
When the Communists seized control of China in 1949, the new regime established state bodies to oversee religion, including Christianity. The regime also founded state-controlled national Catholic and Protestant churches, which ordain and control clergy.
All Chinese Christians are required to register with either of the official state-sanctioned churches. For example, the Catholic Patriotic Association is the state-sponsored alternative to the Roman Catholic Church.
The Communist version of the Catholic Church “does not acknowledge the authority of the Pope,” says Charles Burton, a Brock University associate professor specializing in comparative politics, government and politics of China, Canada-China relations, and human rights.
“The Roman Catholic Church is an illegal organization in China,” says Burton, who is a former counsellor at the Canadian Embassy in Beijing. “But most Catholics in China do not affiliate with the CPA, so they have to worship ‘underground’.”
According to USCIRF’s Swett, Chinese Christians who attend unregistered churches, also known as house churches, face threats, arbitrary arrest and sanctions in the workplace. Burton adds that churches “not registered with the State Administration for Religious Affairs are subject to harassment.” For instance, “ministers may be subject to arrest and church buildings destroyed.”
“While an increasing number of unregistered churches in China are able to operate with greater freedom than before, there continue to be cases of arrest, disappearance, harassment and confiscation of property among their members,” says says Kiri Kankhwende, a spokesperson for Christian Solidarity Worldwide. The United Kingdom-based nongovernmental organization works for religious freedom around the globe through advocacy and human rights.
For example, CSW has received reports of a crackdown on unregistered Christian meetings in China’s Xinjiang province. “In areas like Xinjiang, where citizens typically face more restrictions on their civil and political rights, even registered religious activities by Muslims, Catholics and Protestants are closely monitored and often restricted,” Kankhwende says.
“Apart from the repression of Christian churches, the government is guilty of severe repression of Tibetan Buddhism in Tibetan areas of China; and a brutal clampdown on Muslims in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region,” says Amnesty International Canada’s Michael Craig.
However, the mistreatment of Muslims, Christians and Buddhists pales in comparison to what the Communist regime does to practitioners of a relatively new spiritual movement. “I think probably the single most persecuted community in China would be the Falun Gong,” says Swett.
Falun Gong is a peaceful movement based on certain moral principles and a series of gentle physical exercises. According to Swett, China’s Communist rulers once encouraged the practice of Falun Gong, “because they felt it inculcated all sorts of virtues.
“But when they realized that the popularity of this particular movement was so great that it posed a potential threat to the Communist Party’s dominance and influence in the lives of the people, they suddenly did a complete about-face.”
Over a decade ago, the Communist Party labelled Falun Gong an “evil cult,” and the regime has been attempting to stamp it out ever since.
“There’s been mind-boggling persecution of the Falun Gong practitioners, including arrest and torture,” says the USCIRF vice-chair. “Some of the most horrific reports have to do with the harvesting of organs from Falun Gong prisoners.”
Human rights defender David Kilgour, who served in the cabinets of several Canadian prime ministers, is an expert on the persecution of Falun Gong. Kilgour, along with Canadian lawyer David Matas, has extensively researched China’s horrific treatment of the movement; both men were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 for their ground breaking work.
“The Communist party denied trafficking in the organs of executed capital offence prisoners for many years, probably since the mid-1980s, and then admitted in 2005 that 90% of the organs were coming from this group,” Kilgour stated in an email interview.
Last month, he delivered a speech in Civita, Norway, calling upon the international community to apply “maximum pressure” on Beijing “to end the pillaging of Falun Gong organs for trafficking purposes.” Kilgour alleges that the regime harvested nearly 42,000 organs from Falun Gong prisoners and sold them on the black market between 2001 and 2005. “The appalling commerce continues today,” he told his Norwegian audience.
Similarly, Swett says that the regime’s treatment of Falun Gong practitioners “rank among the worst sort of human rights abuses you can find taking place in the world today.”
“Although China is a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which guarantees freedom of religion or belief, it has not yet ratified it,” states CSW’s Kankhwende.
“The Chinese government should be encouraged to ratify the Convention and to ensure that officials in central and local government, as well as law enforcement officials, are adequately trained to protect and promote freedom of religion of belief for all, in line with its own constitution and its obligations under international law,” Kankhwende says.
When the Conservatives formed government in 2006, Prime Minister Stephen Harper took a hard line on China’s horrible human rights record, famously refusing to sell out Canada’s principles to the “almighty dollar.” But over the two years, the Harper government has bolstered commercial relations with China and become reluctant to publicly chide Beijing for its gross human rights violations.
When contacted for comment about the current state of religious freedom in China, the newly established office of Andrew Bennett, Canada’s Ambassador for Religious Freedom, shunted the information request to the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada.
Curiously, a spokesperson for the department stated, “DFATD is not in a position to complete research on your questions.” However, the spokesperson stated in an email that Canada is concerned about religious freedom in China, and raises the issue with Beijing in bilateral and multilateral forums.
When it comes to defending human rights and religious liberty, Swett thinks America needs “to be a little bolder, a little braver” in its dealings with Beijing. “We need to have a little more steel in our spine when it comes to advocating for these very important causes.”
The same could also now be said of Canada.
Follow Geoffrey P. Johnston, a local journalist, on Twitter @GeoffyPJohnston