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Just days before Secretary of State Antony Blinken heads to China in an attempt to improve relations, Taiwan’s top legislative leader was in Washington thanking the U.S. for its support and denouncing Beijing’s “all-out assault on religion” amid a broader effort to block the Chinese people from enjoying fundamental freedoms and human rights.
You Si-kun, who serves as the speaker of Taiwan’s Parliament, spoke Wednesday at the International Religious Freedom Summit, a gathering of bipartisan coalition of leaders, nonprofits, and businesses supporting freedom to worship globally. You’s visit is viewed as a book-end to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last summer.
In making the trip, Pelosi defied warnings from both Beijing and the Biden administration that it could undermine U.S. diplomatic relations with China. You’s visit to Washington was more under the radar but undoubtedly noticed by China’s leaders who earlier this week warned Pelosi’s successor Kevin McCarthy against visiting Taiwan amid reports the newly installed speaker is planning his own trip to the island later this year.
You didn’t mince words in his lengthy remarks. He blamed President Xi Jinping for ushering in a new era of religious persecution, starting in 2014, which includes the detention and forced labor of more than a million Uyghurs, as well as the decades-long repression of Tibetans and members of the Falun Gong, and efforts to stop millions of Christians from worshiping in underground churches.
Around the globe, many minority religious groups are denied the freedom to worship and live in fear of losing their lives, You said, citing the Muslim Rohingya in Burma and Christians in North Korea. “And, in China, there is a comprehensive, systematic repression of religion,” he told the summit.
Upon assuming power, Xi launched a campaign of repression against Christians who don’t belong to official government-approved churches, You recalled.
