China continued to restrict activities, personal freedom of religious adherents in 2020: US report

Washington [US], May 13 : The Chinese government in 2020 continued to assert control over religion and restrict the activities and personal freedom of religious adherents that it perceived as threatening state or Chinese Communist Party (CCP) interests, according to the US 2020 report on International Religious Freedom (IRF).
According to the IRF report issued on Wednesday, there continued to be reports of deaths in custody and that the government tortured, physically abused, arrested, detained, sentenced to prison, subjected to forced indoctrination in CCP ideology, or harassed adherents of both registered and unregistered religious groups for activities related to their religious beliefs and practices.
The government continued its 2019-2024 campaign of "sinicisation" to bring all religious doctrine and practice in line with CCP doctrine, including by requiring clergy of all faiths to attend political indoctrination sessions, monitoring religious services, pre-approving sermons, and altering religious texts, including, according to media, stories from the life of Jesus, to emphasise loyalty to the CCP and the State.
The government continued its campaign against religious groups it characterised as "cults" and maintained a ban on other groups, such as Falun Gong, a religious movement that gained popularity in China during the 1990s, the IRF report said.
Furthermore, there were reports the government used the COVID-19 pandemic as a pretext to increase the surveillance and arrest of religious practitioners and to curtail private worship among religious groups. Authorities continued to restrict the printing and distribution of the Bible, Quran, and other religious literature, and penalised publishing and copying businesses that handled religious materials.
The US report also cited reports of closing or destroying Islamic, Christian, Buddhist, and Taoist houses of worship and destroyed public displays of religious symbols throughout the country.
Meanwhile, Christians, Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists, and Falun Gong practitioners reported severe societal discrimination in employment, housing, and business opportunities. In Xinjiang and Tibet, authorities continued to suppress Uyghur and Tibetan language and culture, while promoting ethnic Han individuals in political, economic, and cultural life. Anti-Muslim speech in social media remained widespread, noted the report.
"The gravest threat to the future of religious freedom is the CCP's war against people of all faiths: Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, and Falun Gong practitioners alike," said US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last year during his visit to Indonesia.
The US government has imposed multiple sanctions on Chinese entities and individuals responsible for the detention and persecution of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang.
Since 1999, China has been designated as a "Country of Particular Concern" (CPC) under the IRF Act of 1998 for having engaged in or tolerated particularly severe violations of religious freedom. It was redesignated again as a CPC in 2020.
Chinese police continued to arrest and otherwise detain leaders and members of religious groups, often those connected with groups not registered with the state-sanctioned religious associations. There were reports police used violence and beatings during arrest and detention, according to the report.
"Sources further continued to report deaths in custody, enforced disappearances, and organ harvesting in prison of individuals whom authorities had targeted based on their religious beliefs or affiliation."
On June 30, the People's Republic of China (PRC) imposed a broad National Security Law (NSL) on Hong Kong with the stated aim of combating secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with foreign powers. Religious leaders and advocates stated that religious freedom remained unchanged during the year, although they expressed concerns about possible future encroachment by PRC authorities.
Since 2017, the Chinese government has detained more than one million Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs, Hui, and members of other Muslim groups, as well as some Christians, in specially built internment camps or converted detention facilities in Xinjiang under the national counterterrorism law and the regional counter-extremism policy.
Authorities subjected individuals to forced disappearance, political indoctrination, torture, physical and psychological abuse, including forced sterilization and sexual abuse, forced labor, and prolonged detention without trial because of their religion and ethnicity, according to the US report.
Meanwhile, the whereabouts of hundreds of prominent Uyghur intellectuals, religious scholars, cultural figures, doctors, journalists, artists, academics, and other professionals, in addition to many other citizens who were arrested or detained, remained unknown, while reports of individuals dying as a result of injuries sustained during interrogations, medical neglect and torture came to the fore.
The government also harassed and threatened Uyghurs living abroad and threatened to retaliate against their families in Xinjiang if they did not spy on the expatriate community, return to Xinjiang, or stop speaking out about relatives in Xinjiang who had been detained or whose whereabouts were unknown.
Early this year, the United States became the first country in the world to declare the Chinese actions in Xinjiang as "genocide".
In February, both the Canadian and Dutch parliaments adopted motions recognising the Uyghur crisis as genocide. The latter became the first parliament in Europe to do so.
On the release of the IRF report, Daniel Nadel, senior official on International Religious Freedom office in a briefing said: "... today we also cannot look away from the ongoing crimes against humanity and genocide the Chinese Government is perpetrating against Muslim Uyghurs and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang. This can be seen as the culmination of decades of repression of religious adherents, from Tibetan Buddhists to Christians to Falun Gong practitioners."