THEOLOGY 2

ANDERSEN, Rebecca Yuan R.

Catholic persecution worse after Vatican-China deal, Congress finds

January 8, 2020

ARTICLE
A new US government report says that human rights abuse in China has worsened in the last
year, and specifically highlighted the escalating persecution of Chinese Catholics in the wake
of the Vatican-China agreement of 2018.

“During its 2019 reporting year, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China found
that the human rights situation has worsened and the rule of law continued to deteriorate, as
the Chinese government and Party increasingly used regulations and laws to assert social and
political control,” stated the commission’s annual report, released on Wednesday.

The report said that “After the PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs signed an agreement with the
Holy See in September 2018 paving the way for unifying the state-sanctioned and
underground Catholic communities, local Chinese authorities subjected Catholic believers in
China to increasing persecution by demolishing churches, removing crosses, and continuing
to detain underground clergy.”

The report’s time frame covers human rights in China from August 2018 to August 2019. The
commission was established by Congress in 2000, as China was set to enter the World Trade
Organization, to report on human rights in the country and to maintain a database of political
prisoners.

Wednesday’s report notes the rise of mass internment camps in the country’s western
Xinjiang province, the brutal persecution of Christians, Muslims, and other unregistered
churches or religious groups, and repression of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong.

The Chinese Communist Party’s five year “sinacization” plan is underway to establish state
control over religion. “Scholars and international rights groups have described religious
persecution in China over the last year to be of an intensity not seen since the Cultural
Revolution,” the report said.

And China is reportedly ramping up stricter controls on religious groups and events in 2020.

New restrictions set to be enforced in February include mandates that religious groups
“adhere to the directives on religions in China, implementing the values of socialism” and
promote the “principles and policies of the Chinese Communist Party.”

Another article “requires that the government authorities be involved in the selection of
religious officers and involved in disputes.” Underground churches or “home” churches are
outlawed.

The 2018 Vatican-China agreement on the appointment of bishops aimed to bring about the
unification of the state-sanctioned Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association and the
underground Church in communion with Rome. Instead, persecution of the underground
Church has continued and, according to some, intensified.

The number of Catholics in China is estimated to be more than 10 million, the report said,
with official statistics saying that 6 million Catholics are part of the state-sanctioned church.

“Observers and Catholic believers expressed concern that the agreement did not provide
sufficient support for the Chinese Catholic community, with one scholar pointing out that the
authorities’ persecution of both underground and official Catholic communities has actually
intensified over the last year under the ‘sinicization’ campaign,” the report found.

“In spring 2019, authorities detained three underground priests of Xuanhua diocese in Hebei
province.”

“Local Chinese authorities subjected Catholic believers in China to increasing persecution by

demolishing churches, removing crosses, and continuing to detain underground clergy,” the
report said.

One of the report’s recommendations to Congress is for members to advocate for “the right of
Catholics to be led by clergy who are selected and who conduct their ministry according to
the standard called for by Catholic religious beliefs.”

The Chinese government’s treatment of other religious communities was also highlighted by
the report.

In the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the country’s far west, “the Commission
believes Chinese authorities may be committing crimes against humanity against the Uyghur
people and other Turkic Muslims,” with estimates at “one million or more Uyghurs” detained
in internment camps and reports of forced labor in the camps.

“Security personnel at the camps subjected detainees to torture, including forced ingestion of
drugs; punishment for behavior deemed religious; forced labor; overcrowding; deprivation of
food; and political indoctrination,” the report said. Due to overcrowding, some detainees
were sent to camps elsewhere in China; some “reportedly died in camps due to poor
conditions, medical neglect, or other reasons.”

There were reports of “the use of electric shocks and shackling people in painful positions” in
camps.

Elsewhere in the region, authorities have set up “a pervasive and high-tech surveillance
system” with facial recognition cameras and cell phone monitoring, as well as biometric data
collection of members of ethnic minorities.

While Muslims have been subject to strict controls on religious practice in the region, the
purported “anti-terrorism” measures of the government might be used elsewhere in the
Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region (Ningxia) where many Hui Muslims reside, the report
noted.

Both the House and the Senate have passed legislation, the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act,
to provide more reporting to the federal government on the human rights abuses committed
against ethnic minorities in Xinjiang and the transfer of technology to enable mass
surveillance.

The two bills must be reconciled before a final vote to send the legislation to the President’s
desk, which members of the commission promised would happen in 2020.

REFLECTION

I have no attachment to any single faith or belief; I believe in good values though.
Growing up without a religion my parents taught me to always be kind and respectful, and I
believe that being kind and respectful are two values that everyone should uphold when
dealing with other people. In the weeks coming into 2020 we were all surrounded with
articles about the Chinese persecuting all other religions that wasn’t their own, like Muslims
in Africa and even their own people who were Catholic. This makes me think that we lack
basic decency. The problem here are not the Muslims or Catholics, or the lack of laws but it’s
the lack of understanding. I really hope reforms and agreements will be made, so that no one
else suffers.

SOURCE

Hadro, M. (2020, January 8). Catholic persecution worse after Vatican-China deal, Congress
finds. Catholic Herald. Retrieved from
https://catholicherald.co.uk/news/2020/01/08/catholic-persecution-worse-after-vatican-china-
deal-congress-finds/