The US State Department said on Friday that China’s repression of religious groups intensified in the last year, citing Beijing’s crackdown on Tibetan Buddhists and its harassment of Christians and members of the Falun Gong spiritual group.
The department’s annual International Religious Freedom report also condemned Myanmar’s government for restricting spiritual activities and abusing its citizens’ rights. In North Korea, the report said, “genuine religious freedom does not exist.”
China and Myanmar have been classified among “Countries of Particular Concern” since the first religious freedom report came out in 1999. North Korea was added to that category in 2001.
PHOTO: EPA
The State Department said that after a violent Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule last March, authorities locked down monasteries, intensified “patriotic education” campaigns and “detained an unknown number of monks and nuns or expelled them from monasteries.”
The government was also said to have increased its criticism of the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, after the protests.
US President George W. Bush’s ambassador for international religious freedom, John Hanford, told reporters that the Tibetan issue has been a prominent part of a resumed US-Chinese human rights dialogue.
The US, he said, objected to harsh treatment of Buddhists loyal to the Dalai Lama and urged China’s government to stop appointing and training lamas.
“The Communist Party of China forbids its members and leaders from having any religious belief, and so there’s an irony in the fact that the Communist government and party takes upon itself the prerogative of choosing religious leaders, such as lamas,” Hanford said.
There was “little evidence,” the report said, that China’s 2005 regulations on religion had improved the country’s spiritual situation.
Applications by unregistered Protestant churches for registration were reported to have been rejected without cause, the State Department said, and “underground” Roman Catholic bishops faced repression over loyalty to the Vatican, “which the government accused of interfering in China’s internal affairs.”
Practitioners of the Falun Gong, which China says is a cult, faced arrest, detention and imprisonment, and the State Department noted reports of death from torture.
But the report also praised China for allowing foreign and domestic religious groups to boost cooperation on religious education and charitable work.
In Myanmar, “the government continued to infiltrate and monitor activities of virtually all organizations, including religious ones,” the report said. Christians there faced restrictions and Muslims suffered violence and close monitoring.
Vietnam was praised for improving its religious rights, although the report said problems remain.
Meanwhile, a Catholic bishop in China returned to his home in Zhengding, near Beijing, four weeks after he was arrested by police, the Vatican’s Asianews agency reported on Friday.
Jia Zhiguo (賈冶國), 73, had been arrested on Aug. 24, the closing day of the Olympic Games in Beijing — bringing to 12 the number of run-ins he has had with police since 2004.
According to the AsiaNews agency, the bishop, who returned home on Thursday, is under house arrest and banned from meeting priests or other Christians.
Asianews reported that the prelate, who advocates the rights of handicapped people, could have been arrested to prevent him from speaking out ahead of the Paralympics in Beijing.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was