Hold China Accountable for Human Rights Violations

Breaking News! On Wednesday, June 17, 2020, President Donald J. Trump’s signed the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act (S.3744), thereby enacting it into law. The Senate and House of Representatives passed this bill last month. Another step towards religious freedom and holding perpetrators accountable.

The International Christian Concern (ICC) is a Washington DC based NGO that serves persecuted religious minorities around the world by providing advocacy and direct assistance. With the goal of making the U.S. government hold the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) accountable for human rights violations, ICC hosted a webinar with two distinguished guests: Eric Meltzer, program manager for the Falun Dafa Association, and Zubayra Shamseden, outreach coordinator for the Uyghur Human Rights Project.

For nearly two decades, Meltzer has worked with congressional offices to end the persecution of the Falun Dafa in China, helping pass several resolutions in the House of Representatives. For more than three decades, Shamseden has worked on human rights issues and engaged in outreach, translation, and research to protect the human rights and political freedoms of the Uyghur people in China.

Before the experts provided specific updates on the Falun Gong and Uyghur peoples, ICC provided a brief background. Currently, between 900,000 to 1.8 million Uyghur Muslims are held captive within 1,300 concentration camps in China’s Xinjiang province. Uyghur slave labor feeds products into international trade and has become a cornerstone of the Chinese economy.

The implementation of mass surveillance technology has further fueled the persecution of Uyghurs, Falun Gong practitioners, Christians, and other religious minorities. While the 2020 report from the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom does show that Chinese authorities continue their systematic campaign of closing hundreds of churches, Christian leaders continue to stress that the religious oppression in China is actually far worse than just church closings.

Christian business owners and leaders are forced to sign documents that reject or deny their faith convictions. If they refuse, the government will seize their individual pensions, benefits, and other liberties. Although Chinese officials continue to deny these allegations, the fact remains that China almost never responds well to persecution accusations. But in denying these accusations and blaming international communities for interference, China appears to be increasingly less worried about international pressure.

The underlining motive for these acts is a part of a larger campaign to eradicate faith and religion from Chinese society. Because the CCP demands absolute loyalty to the state, the state cannot afford sharing space with a higher power. But for some reason, China is still allowed space on the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC). Even after the National People’s Congress passed the notorious national security law over Hong Kong, even after this law was condemned by countries like the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom as a violation of the freedoms promised to Hong Kong in the 1984 agreement, China serves on the UNHRC.

The international community must do more. But on a domestic level, the U.S. should pass House Resolution 919, which condemns China’s appointment to the UNHRC, and House Resolution 493, which condemns the persecution of Christians in China.

Beginning with Erik Meltzer, the panel experts provided a more in-depth report on religious groups of focus. Meltzer explained that Falun Gong is a spiritual practice in the Buddhist tradition whose core tenants are truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. Falun Gong has no formal hierarchy and is always taught free of charge. Although China has a 5000-year civilization that is largely built on a belief in the divine, that all changed after the CCP took over mainland China.

Though the CCP sought to establish a new Chinese culture based in atheism, it could not completely extinguish the Chinese people’s flame of belief. By 1998—just six years after being introduced—a Chinese government survey found that there were between 70 and 100 million Falun Gong practitioners in China from all walks of life. This number amounts to about one in every 13 Chinese people. Jiang Zemin, the CCP leader in 1999, felt threatened by Falun Gong’s popularity and tried to eliminate the faith in a nationwide persecution. Jiang Zemin believed that, in just three months, he could eradicate the faith.

As a result, ransacked Falun Gong practitioners were forced into labor camps and psychiatric hospitals where they were subjugated to over 100 methods of torture, injected with nerve damaging drugs, and forced to work 14 hours a day with no compensation. Neither the young nor old were spared. Though 4,000 identified people have died of torture and other abuses over the past 21 years of persecution, the horrific human rights violation that gained the most attention is forced organ harvesting. Jiang Zemin quickly erected organ transplantation centers across China at the beginning of the Falun Gong persecution, harvesting the coveted organs of Falun Gong practitioners as they live healthy lifestyles. It is no wonder that, in China, the wait time for an organ transplant can be just days.

In response to these atrocities, to date more than 357 million Chinese have renounced their ties with the CCP. Falun Gong practitioners living outside of China have played a key role in bypassing the CCP’s Great Firewall by developing several free pieces of software, such as Freegate and Ultrasurf. In the U.S., five resolutions for Falun Gong protection were passed in the House of Representatives and one bipartisan Senate resolution (Resolution 274) condemns forced organ harvesting and Falun Gong persecution. However, Resolution 274 has yet to pass.

Next, Zubayra Shamseden reported on the state of Uyghur Muslims. There are around 13 million Uyghur Muslims in China. The CCP has long violated the Uygur’s cultural, linguistic, and religious rights and has turned the Uyghur region, traditionally East Turkistan, into a high-tech surveillance military state.

In the last three years, over 1,000,000 Uyghur and other Turkish Muslims have been placed into so-called re-education camps. It is not clear whether all of them have been released, contrary to China’s declarations. Inside the camps, there is intense psychological pressure as they attempt to force Uyghurs to give up their religion and language; essentially, their identity. Prisoners are subjugated to hours of Islam denunciation and are compelled to repeat slogans that praise the CCP and Xi Jinping. Furthermore, Uyghurs are forced to learn the Chinese language and, if they fail to speak and read it, they undergo further punishment.

Every kind of Uyghur can be found in the camps—such as farmers, academics, students, medical doctors, and musicians—of all ages. New dormitories are constantly being built to house young Uyghur children who were taken, without warning, as a method of purporting state control. The evidence flows from the testimonies of family members, satellite imagery, eyewitness and former detainee accounts, and leaked communications.

China is treating Islam as a mental illness that must be corrected. If this religious extremism is not cured, the CCP teaches, then it will act like a poisonous medicine and cause violent terrorist incidents that will metastasize across China. But what China is treating as extreme is, in fact, the most innocuous and basic practices of Islam. For example, one Uyghur woman was made to believe she had an “ideological problem” for wearing a headscarf. Simply put, a counter-terrorism campaign does not include putting millions of innocent people in harsh detention camps that have nothing to do with legitimate security concerns.

But there is hope. Both experts agree that the CCP will not be successful in eradicating the faiths of these people. In fact, the persecution has only brought people of diverse faiths together. Furthermore, one act of courage can make a huge difference in the world, such as the woman in Oregon who raised awareness after finding a note written by Uyghur prisoner that was hidden in a Halloween decoration! However, private companies must take responsibility and look into the supply chains where they’re doing business, making sure products are not coming out of slave labor camps. The government can only regulate so much, so it is up to private companies and private citizens to make moral choices.