CSW - everyone free to believe

In 2020, CSW published a new report on freedom of religion or belief (FoRB) in China, entitled ‘Repressed, Removed, Re-Educated: The stranglehold on religious life in China’². The report outlined the rapid and significant decline in the level of FoRB in China, and explained that ‘almost daily new details emerge about the use of technology in surveillance and profiling of Uyghurs in XUAR [Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region], alongside news of another church closure, another anti-xie-jiao³ campaign, and another flat denial by the government that any of this violates the right to FoRB.’

The violations described in CSW’s 2020 report have continued and, in many instances, have significantly increased. Therefore, rather than replacing the 2020 report, this new report focuses on violations against religion or belief communities that are under-reported or currently developing. It is based on in-depth research by five independent experts, which sheds light on less well-known cases and emerging FoRB developments.

Two years after the 2020 report, the authorities’ crackdown on FoRB has continued increasing in both breadth and severity. In a series of new regulations outlined below, further restrictions on space for registered religious groups have resulted in the complete shutting down of any space for independent religion or belief communities:

February 2018	Measures for the Approval and Management of Temporary Religious Activity Sites were published.
February 2018	Newly amended Regulations on Religious Affairs came into force.
March 2018	The implementation of the Five-Year Plan for Promoting the Sinicization of Christianity (2018-2022) was launched.
April 2018	The State Council published a white paper on ‘China’s Policies and Practices on Safeguarding Freedom of Religion and Belief’.
June 2018	The CCP Central Committee and the State Council issued ‘Opinions on Strengthening and Improving the Work of Islam in the New Situation’.
January 2019	The ‘Five-Year Work Plan for Adhering to the Direction of Chinese Islam in China (2018-2022)’ was announced.
2019	The United Front Work Department and Ministry of Public Security issued the ‘Special Action Plan for Investigating and Handling Christian Infiltration from Abroad in accordance with the Law’.
September 2020	Measures for the Administration of Religious Communities came into force.
November 2020	The Implementation Rules for the Regulations on the Administration of Religious Activities of Foreigners were published.
December 2020	Regulations on the Administration of Islamic Hajj Affairs came into force.
May 2021	Measures for the Administration of Religious Clergy came into force.
September 2021	Measures for the Administration of Religious Institutions came into force.
March 2022	Measures for the Administration of Internet Religious Information Services came into force.
June 2022	Financial Management Measures for Places of Religious Activities came into force.

In reality, the restrictions on religion or belief communities have even surpassed the guiding measures from these regulations. Over the past two years we have witnessed more and longer sentences against Christian leaders; the demolition or ‘rectification’ of more religious buildings including churches and mosques; mass arrests of Tibetan Buddhists and the demolition of Tibetan Buddhist statues; and the arbitrary detention and disappearance of countless Falun Gong practitioners, members of the Church of Almighty God and other banned groups, as well as Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other ethnic groups in the Uyghur region, and lawyers and activists who defend the right to FoRB.

‘For Muslims, the dome of their mosque is in keeping with their aesthetics, and through this style of architecture they express their Muslim identity. Destroying the dome is in effect destroying an identity.’

From 2020 up to the time of writing this report, the COVID-19 pandemic has radically impacted the lives of people around the world, and China is no exception. However, research from May and June 2020 highlighted by CSW found that even during the most severe period of the pandemic, the demolition of crosses and the banning of churches in various places never stopped.⁵ At the same time, members of religion or belief communities who have attempted to find and report information about the pandemic in China have been put in jail:

Falun Gong businessman Fang Bin was taken away by police in February 2020 and his whereabouts remain unknown;⁶ Christian citizen journalist Zhang Zhan was arrested in May 2020 and later sentenced to four years’ imprisonment for ‘picking quarrels and provoking trouble’;⁷ while in January 2022 artist Xu Na was sentenced to eight years in prison for reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic and practising Falun Gong.⁸

‘In their [police officers’] eyes, Falun Gong practitioners are not human beings...They aren’t allowed any opportunity to defend themselves....They don’t have the rights that even murder suspects have. It's totally unimaginable.’

The scale and severity of these violations has not gone unnoticed outside China. United Nations experts,¹⁰ the European Union,¹¹ and democratic governments, parliamentarians and civil society organisations around the world have repeatedly called on the Chinese government to end violations against human rights defenders, citizen journalists, religion or belief communities and others. In particular, greater attention has been paid to the grave human rights abuses in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), with parliaments, the US government¹² and one people’s tribunal¹³ accusing the authorities of genocide or crimes against humanity. 2021 and 2022 also saw further attention to forced labour¹⁴ and in particular action to end forced labour in the Uyghur Region, including the US’s Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), which was signed into law by President Biden in December 2021.¹⁵

Governments around the world have also introduced sanctions on officials believed to be responsible for human rights violations in XUAR.¹⁶ These actions have been met with fierce criticism from the Chinese government, and counter-actions such as sanctions against academics and parliamentarians including five members of the European Parliament.¹⁷

‘In 2018, you said our meeting venues were illegal and no one would care if people just met in their homes. Then you said our organisation was illegal. Then you said meeting in homes was also illegal. Now you blatantly insult us and say we are xie jiao [religious movements banned as ‘heterodox teachings’].’

Despite the efforts made to hold the Chinese authorities to account, the overall FoRB situation in China has continued to decline, as will be demonstrated below.

The first research paper summarised in this report, Article 300 of the Criminal Law and Religions and Beliefs in China: from a Perspective Based on Legal Texts, is based on a study of the implementation of the ‘anti-xie jiao’ Article 300 of the Criminal Law. The author uses case information from official sources to track the application of this Article. The author finds that the Chinese Communist Party has cracked down on various faith groups labelled as xie jiao, in some cases because of their criticism of the Party. The report also examines the way police departments have established databases to control and discriminate against religious people, while the authorities crack down on unregistered house churches using ‘pocket crime’ offences such as ‘disrupting public order’ and ‘provoking trouble’.¹⁸

In the second research paper, The Chinese Communist Party's suppression of Islam in China in recent years, the author focuses on the suppression of Islam outside XUAR: across the country, thousands of mosques have had their domes and minarets removed or been completely demolished, sometimes at night to prevent protests by local Muslims; those who have tried to prevent the demolitions have been detained and in at least one case sent to a psychiatric hospital. Schools have been forcibly closed, imams have been arrested, and, in common with other religions, Muslim social media groups, websites and blogs have been shut down.

The third summary is focused on a research paper The Church in the Mountains: rural churches in Yunnan Province which raises concerns about the situation of rural churches in Yunnan Province, where Christians, who make up 97% of the population in some villages, are facing increasing pressure from Religious Affairs Bureaux. Children are prohibited from attending church, with loudspeakers at the door reminding the congregation of this rule if the government-installed surveillance cameras detect minors during Sunday services. The authorities have also frozen churches’ bank accounts so that they are unable to pay their staff, leaving them to survive on potatoes and corn donated by neighbours. In some areas, only a few churches are still maintaining small groups that meet in people’s homes.

Research on The impact of the new Measures for the Administration of Internet Religious Information Services (the fourth research paper) finds that even before the measures came into effect on 1 March 2022, netizens began disbanding WeChat groups on religious topics or changing the names of the groups to avoid religious content. According to the author’s research, it is difficult to find live broadcasts or videos of a religious nature online now, while online religious community sites have been shut down. Alarmingly, several Christians report being warned by employers not to share Bible verses or prayers online.

Finally, in an analysis of the future of religious freedom for Protestants and Catholics in Hong Kong entitled CCP’s Insidious Attack on Religious Freedom in Hong Kong, the author predicts that the authorities will take discreet but serious steps to restrict Christian groups in the city by increasing controls over education and churches, including clergy. The author also suggests how Christian groups may respond to these restrictions, predicting splits between Protestant churches, some of which will turn to small house group meetings in order to survive. The author shares a bleak outlook for Catholic churches in the city, and for freedom of religion or belief overall.

Together, these experts provide a wider and concerning view of the FoRB situation in China. This report aims to provide a space for the opinions of these experts, to amplify their voices as part of our current analysis of common themes from their varied standpoints and experiences. The examples of FoRB violations from these independent perspectives show the wide range and reach of FoRB violations in China. The objective of this report is to inform and inspire policy makers, parliamentarians, researchers, NGOs, media and religious leaders to pay closer attention to FoRB violations in China, and to consider what action they can take to address these abuses.

This summary has been provided by the author and translated by CSW, with the author’s permission. The author is a writer and scholar of religion.

‘Since the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), it has never stopped suppressing and persecuting religions. After Xi Jinping came to power, the persecution of religions has intensified. Islam, with its 20 million followers, has suffered endlessly.

‘The CCP has a long history of oppression against Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang, and since the turn of the century, it has tightened its grip on local Muslims in the name of counter-terrorism. 2017 saw the start of the establishment of concentration camps in Xinjiang, where millions of innocent Uyghurs are subject to forced labour. There is now ample evidence to confirm this crime.

‘The genocide committed by the CCP in Xinjiang is well known to the international community, but its repression of Muslims outside Xinjiang is less well known. For this reason, we are publishing this investigation report with a focus on Muslims outside Xinjiang.

‘The CCP’s persecution of Islam is determined by the nature of the CCP’s political party, which is an atheist regime and therefore carries a natural hostility towards religion. Because of the ability of religion to influence the cohesion of people's hearts, the CCP has guarded closely against all religions, fearing their spread. After the Communist Party came into power, the 1950s and 1960s saw its brutal persecution of religions. Its religious policies improved slightly after the 1980s, but this was only a small relaxation. The development of religions seems to have caused panic again, and this century has seen the tightening of restrictions on religions again.

‘In the case of Islam, the 2010s saw the arrest of several scholars, including a Muslim bookseller and his wife in Yunnan, a scholar from Zhejiang and an imam in Ningxia.

‘In 2017, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) proposed a “Five-Year Plan for the Sinicization of Islam”²⁰, a plan to remove the influence of three “-zations” in China within five years: “Arabization”, “Saudization” and the “generalization of halal”²¹. This was a trumped-up accusation intended to suppress Muslims in general. The scope of Sinicization of Islam includes the forced removal or alteration of all mosque domes and new minarets, and even arched windows, doors and ornaments; the forced defacement or destruction of Arabic scriptures hung or posted in all Muslim restaurants and Muslim households; the banning of the original Arabic Halal symbol on all halal food, and the closure of Arabic schools attached to mosques and the expulsion of students, as well as the closure of private Islamic websites, the banning of social media accounts dealing with such issues, and the admonition of those who publish information and spread the truth.

‘According to the Islamic Association of China, in 2016, there were about 40,000 mosques in China, of which 24,000 were in Xinjiang. In September 2020, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) said that some 16,000 mosques in Xinjiang had been demolished or damaged since 2017.²² Most of the original inland mosques were built in the Chinese style, and after the reform and opening up, many mosques were rebuilt, some of which were built in the Arab dome style; but under this campaign, domes and minarets have been removed from all the new mosques.

‘The mosques with domes were required to be replaced with flat roofs or pointed roofs, and excessively tall minarets had to be removed or their height cut down. This task was enforced by the local civil and religious authorities, with the assistance of the public security authorities. Mosque management teams are forced under duress to sign consent forms for rectification, and if they do not agree the mosques are forcibly demolished by the local authorities, and people who protest it are detained and admonished. There is no legal basis for the forced demolition, and the government authorities quote “confidential documents” as their source of authority.

‘Previously, the Grand Mosque of Weizhou was razed to the ground by the Chinese Communist Party during the Cultural Revolution and was rebuilt by the people with their own funds after the reform and opening up. As part of the new demolition campaign, the government demanded that the Great Mosque of Weizhou must be forcibly demolished by 10 August 2018. On the night of the 10th, people who had heard the news gathered at the mosque to guard it, and on that day the CCP mobilised military police and armoured vehicles, and resorted to coercion by cutting off the internet and electricity. The stalemate lasted until the early hours of the following day, when government officials stepped in and said they would no longer demolish the mosque, and the crowd dispersed. A few days later, however, the government used a combination of soft and hard tactics to take control of the local mosque management committee and eventually demolished the mosque's main dome in a low-key manner. Without its dome, the mosque has become an awkward-looking building with a pointed tile roof.

‘In August 2021, several women of faith gathered to protest against the demolition of the dome at the Dongguan Mosque in Xining, and were taken away by the public security authorities for intimidation and admonishment. In December 2021, a small mosque in Hohhot was forcibly demolished, and a female Muslim who stood alone under a crane in protest was forcibly dragged away and sent to a psychiatric hospital, where she was later forced to sign a statement saying that she would not oppose the demolition any more before being released.

‘In March 2021, the Communist Party’s forced demolition of mosques across Yunnan was resisted by Muslims in Zhaotong, Pu'er and Xishuangbanna. The Muslims of Daguan County in Zhaotong organised a march to protest against a demolition by the authorities, who stopped the demolition during the day. However, when the Muslims arrived the next day, it had been secretly demolished overnight. As a result, the mosques in Zhaotong have since arranged for the Muslim masses to take turns guarding the mosques day and night. The Muslim masses in Zhaotong who guarded one mosque dug graves for themselves, stating that they had pledged to fight for the mosque until their final breath. Muslims at the Pu’er Mosque, and at the Dai Mosque in Xishuangbanna, wore white shrouds to show that they would die to defend the mosque. There is currently a standoff at the mosques in these areas.

‘In addition to the mosques, Muslim gathering areas everywhere were affected: food streets, archways, restaurants and houses. Food streets and cultural streets with Arab styles have been demolished, archways and pavilions with domes and scriptures have been removed, Arabic signs in restaurants have been covered or painted over, and Arab tiles in front of Muslim households have been forced to be covered.

‘Since 2017, a large number of Arabic schools have been forced to close and students dismissed, with only some mosques now retaining traditional scriptural education. In 2019, the Arabic school in Pingliang and the Arabic school at the Garden Street Mosque in Zhengzhou were shut down and the headmasters were forced to leave the country.

‘In addition, on 8 October 2019, a number of primary and secondary schools in Sanya, Hainan, banned Muslim girls from wearing the hijab and students were banned from entering the school and had to sit and study in front of the school.

‘Since 2016, various Islamic websites and forums have been shut down, with the Communist authorities shutting down the country’s largest Muslim website, 2muslim.com. Another well-known Islamic website, lvsezhonghua.net, has also been shut down several times, and its owner has now had to move its servers outside the country. On 1 March 2022, the Chinese Communist Party issued measures to manage religious information on the Internet and began banning all content about religion online. Several WeChat groups, WeChat accounts and Weibo accounts²³ were blocked, and most Muslims dared not speak out in anger about it.

‘On 20 February 2022, some Muslims launched a signature campaign in solidarity with the Xuzhou woman in chains,²⁴ which was co-signed by more than 200 people from China and abroad. A few days later, the appeal letter was censored in China, several social media accounts of its author were banned, and most of the signatories in China were summoned and admonished by the authorities, and forced to write pledges and confidentiality agreements.

‘In addition to this, the Chinese Communist Party has employed a large number of propaganda accounts on social media to perpetuate the slander and defamation of Islam, concocting various rumours in an attempt to create the illusion that “Islam is an evil religion and Muslims are terrorists,” and to completely demonise Islam in order to gain the support of the general public for the suppression of Islam.

‘This summary is based on a series of investigations into the repression and persecution of Muslims outside Xinjiang, China, by the Chinese Communist authorities in recent years. It is hoped that the international community will understand what is really happening and support Chinese Muslims, and all those who are being oppressed.’

This summary is based on first-hand research conducted in April 2022. It has been provided by the author and edited by CSW, with the author’s permission. The author is an independent researcher with a special interest in FoRB.

The Measures, which went into effect in March 2022, prohibit the sharing of religious content online without a permit, including through text messages, images, audio and video. They also prohibit religious content that ‘induce[s] minors to believe in religion’. All respondents indicated that they were already feeling the pressure of this new regulation to a greater or lesser extent.

Main findings of the research:

1. 1. WeChat groups are forced to disband, or require strict self-censorship before sending messages.

   Respondents said that since the end of January 2022, some large WeChat groups have announced their disbandment. At the same time, smaller groups also changed their names to avoid religious allusions. In addition, a Muslim imam said that a friend at the provincial Islamic association had told him that WeChat groups cannot exceed 10 people and that they cannot post religion-related content.

   Another interviewee said that her house church abandoned WeChat as a communication tool, opting instead for the safer Telegram messaging app. However, it is inconvenient as using Telegram requires bypassing the Great Firewall (GFW).²⁶ She said that because of a national anti-fraud app launched by the police, many people find it too risky to use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to bypass the GFW.

2. 2. Any unofficial live streaming of a religious nature is banned, and videos have been taken down.

   All respondents clearly stated that it is difficult to see live broadcasts or videos of a religious nature now, and most that are available are just popular science videos about religion or religious history. Major video sites such as Baidu Video and Bilibili have removed religion-related videos on a large scale, and it is now difficult for users to search for videos such as sermons. The Muslim imam interviewed also confirmed that he received a notice which bans all online live broadcasts.

   On 4 March, Japanese monk Yakushiji Kanho announced on Bilibili that his weekly live prayer could no longer continue.²⁷ In addition, one of his live broadcasts in February was stopped halfway through. This shows that the impact of the new management measures on live broadcasts and videos is immediate, and even foreigners with relatively more freedom will not be treated differently on this issue.

3. 3. Daily sharing and communication are severely restricted.

   For most respondents, this is the most worrying and disturbing. One interviewee said that he broke the habit of sharing scriptures on WeChat every Sunday because he had been reported to the authorities by a colleague for it. Another interviewee said that he once posted a prayer and was approached by a manager that afternoon asking him to delete it. One interviewee who works at a school said that she cannot share any religion-related content, let alone comment on it, without affecting bonuses and performance assessment for her and her colleagues.

   Meanwhile, Chinese authorities have begun increasing efforts to shut down Christian online community sites. The 21-year-old ‘Jonah Home’²⁸ was permanently closed in April. The site announcement reads:

   ‘For obvious reasons, this website is unable to serve you from today. Thanks for your company and support! The disappearance of a website is only about a website disappearing; it doesn't mean anything. Apart from a URL failing to load from that moment, nothing else stops at that moment. Therefore, there is no need to be concerned; just keep going. Jonah 2022.4.12’

   In addition, apps such as the popular Bible app ‘WeDevote’ have been taken down and cannot be downloaded at present. Similarly, a large number of WeChat official accounts have been shut down one after another, and it is now difficult for Christians in China to find online resources about Christianity.

   The experiences mentioned above prove that the new measures are being firmly implemented, which makes some respondents begin to worry that they may face further restrictions in the future. One interviewee believed that this is the Chinese authorities’ strategy for religious believers; that these restrictions are the means, while taming and eradication of certain religious practices is the goal. Another interviewee agreed, arguing that the ultimate goal of the Chinese authorities’ policy for Christianity is to establish ‘red churches’ in China with the so-called ‘party spirit’, that is, churches that obey the regime rather than God.