China continues to violate the right to freedom of religion, although the worst forms of persecution long-term imprisonment and physical abuse of religious activists appear to have declined in recent years. In China: State Control of Religion, released today
Human Rights Watch/Asia cites a dramatic growth in all religions in officially atheist China, with Buddhism growing the fastest of all. As interest in religion has increased, so have efforts by the state to control it. Chinese authorities continue the crackdown in the belief that religion breeds instability, separatism, and subversion, with Christianity and Islam in particular seen as vehicles for foreign influence and infiltration.
Control increasingly takes the form of a registration process administered by the State Council's Religious Affairs Bureau through which the government monitors membership in religious organizations, locations of meetings, religious training, selection of clergy, publication of religious materials, and funding for religious activities. The government also now undertakes annual inspections of registered religious organizations. Failure to register can result in the imposition of fines, seizure of property, razing of "illegal" religious structures, forcible dispersal of religious gatherings, and, occasionally, short term detention. In Tibet, control takes the form of political vetting of monks and nuns and strict supervision of their institutions. These controls not only violate the right to freedom of religion, but also the rights to freedom of expression, assembly, and association.
While long-term imprisonment, violence, and physical abuse by security forces against religious activists still occur, they appear to be less frequent than they were at the time of the first Human Rights Watch study of religion in China in 1992. In 1997 Human Rights Watch found isolated cases but no evidence of widespread or systematic brutality. When reports of these harsher measures do surface, they are increasingly denounced by central government officials as examples of the excesses of local officials and their failure to implement policy directives correctly.
A key problem is the Chinese government's definition of freedom of religion as the right to private belief, rather than accepting freedom of religion in the broader context set forth in a key U.N. resolution called the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief. That declaration states that freedom of religion includes among other things the right to assemble with others, to maintain appropriate charitable or humanitarian institutions, to write, issue and disseminate relevant publications, to teach a religion or belief in an appropriate place, to solicit and receive voluntary contributions, to train, appoint, elect or designate religious leaders, and to establish and maintain communications with others at the national and international levels.
Human Rights Watch details restrictions on religious activities in general as well as specific targets of government repression: Tibetan Buddhism, Islam in Xinjiang, the Catholic underground, evangelical Protestantism, and the wide variety of groups that the Chinese government labels cults and superstitious sects. The 71-page report includes a section on the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong and several appendices containing copies of internal government regulations on religious policy and control of religious activities in specific areas of the country.
Human Rights Watch/Asia urges the Chinese government to implement the recommendations made by Abdelfattah Amor, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Religious Intolerance, who visited China in 1994. Those recommendations include amending Article 36 of the Chinese constitution so that the right to manifest one's religion is recognized along with the right to freedom of belief; ending surveillance of religious activities; and releasing anyone detained for membership in "unofficial" religious organizations.
Human Rights Watch calls on the international community to urge China to invite the Special Rapporteur back to China and to include concerns about China's restrictions on religious practices in a resolution at the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, covering China's human rights practices more generally. In addition, concerned governments should develop a coordinated policy for pressing China to open Xinjiang and Tibet up to international human rights monitors and foreign journalists on a regular and unrestricted basis.
This report is the tenth in a series of Human Rights Watch reports covering freedom of religion in China and Tibet.
UPDATE
Just after our new report, State Control of Religion in China, went to press on October 9, we received additional information about three cases mentioned in the report, including that one Protestant evangelical leader was sentenced to a ten-year term. The information, which remains to be officially confirmed, does not change the overall conclusions of the report including that the Chinese government uses long-term detention as the exception rather than the rule in dealing with religious activists but it is nonetheless disturbing.
On September 25, 1997, the Zhengzhou Intermediate Court in Henan province sentenced Xu Yongze, also known as Peter Xu, to a ten-year prison term for "disturbing public order." Xu, who is leader of the "Born Again" movement, reportedly refused to defend himself on the grounds that the court had decided his sentence before the trial began. No family members were at the proceedings; they had not even been informed that a trial date had been set. Xu's thirty-year-old wife, Qing Jing, reportedly is still being held, as are Qin Musheng, his older brother, and Sister Fengxian. Liu Zhenying, a Charismatic group leader is believed to have escaped; it is unclear if Wang Xincai and Elder Qiao are still in detention; and no additional information about Brother Sun is available. Unconfirmed reports indicated that the court may have already sentenced some of the others arrested with Xu or are expected to do so soon. (See p. 20.)
Bishop Su Zhimin, the sixty-five-year-old underground bishop of Baoding, Hebei province, was taken into custody at 12:00 noon on October 8, 1997 in Xinji, Hebei, about 280 kilometers south of Beijing and returned to Baoding to the custody of the Public Security Bureau. After the crackdown in Donglu in May 1996 which culminated in the arrests of Auxiliary Bishop An Shuxin, priests, and lay leaders, Bishop Su went into hiding where he was able to remain for seventeen months. Before this current detention, Bishop Su was jailed at least five times, all told spending some twenty years in prison. (See p. 17.)
Unconfirmed information updating the treatment of Catholic school children from the area in and around Donglu suggests that children who cannot supply a written declaration by their parents stating either that they have renounced their faith or joined the official church still are not permitted to enroll in local schools. The practice, which began in mid-1995, reportedly affects a few hundred children in several villages. Some have gone elsewhere to study; some are being taught to read and write at home. Government work teams comprised of religious affairs and public security officials are still at work in the area. One of their initiatives involves organizing "study classes" for children and youth unaffiliated with the official church. It has also been reported that as an incentive, children who join the official church are permitted to participate in religious activities. (See p. 17.)
As in 1996, officials sealed off Donglu during May 1997, when pilgrimages to the Marian shrine there would normally have taken place. Officials arranged for military exercises and declared the area a military restricted zone. Work team members forced area Catholics to set up measures to keep outsiders away. Over 100 work team members were stationed in Donglu and over twenty in nearby villages.
