China represses religious minorities.
Utilizing cutting-edge technology, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is perfecting the religious oppression of millions at home and exporting the same capabilities abroad. The CCP’s ongoing abuse of Christians, Muslims and Buddhists lays bare the stakes for human freedom in the United States’ great power competition with China.
In its annual report released last week, the U. S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) concluded that the CCP is “engaging in systematic, ongoing and egregious religious freedom violations.” Thanks to Western media investigations and courageous Chinese whistleblowers, many outside China are familiar with the CCP’s deplorable persecution of Muslims in Xinjiang. In the past year, Muslims have suffered “torture, rape, sterilization and other abuses,” and authorities have “destroyed or damaged thousands of mosques.”
Christians, who make up roughly five percent of China’s population, have fared little better. Chinese officials “raided or closed down hundreds of Protestant house churches in 2019.” Local officials continue to offer cash bounties for information on underground churches. Chinese authorities have burned unauthorized Bibles, ripped down crucifixes and replaced likenesses of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary with images of Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Tibetan Buddhists continue to suffer “forced assimilation and suppression.” Monks and nuns unwilling to subordinate their faith to the CCP’s dictates have been “expelled from their monasteries, imprisoned and tortured.” As an extraordinary sign of the hopelessness and desperation the CCP’s oppression has caused, USCIRF noted that at least 156 Tibetans have self-immolated since February 2009.
While authoritarianism and religious persecution are sadly not new, the CCP leads the world in the abuse of advanced technologies to carry out its religious cleansing.
