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.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
RSS