Laogai Research Foundation executive director Harry Wu made a visit to the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC, to congratulate his friend Congressman Frank Wolf on the release of his new book, Prisoner of Conscience.  Harry met Rep. Wolf across the street from the Heritage Foundation, and the two "prisoners of conscience" walked in together for the press conference on the book release.

Laogai Research Foundation founder and executive director Harry Wu paid a visit today to the Czech Embassy in Washington, DC, to offer condolences on the death of Vaclav Havel. 

7 December 2011 - Washington, D.C. – On Tuesday, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China held a hearing entitled, “One Year After the Nobel Peace Prize Award to Liu Xiaobo: Conditions for Political Prisoners and Prospects for Political Reform,” which brought together a number of scholars, rights activists, and dissidents to discuss what Liu’s imprisonment means for the future of China’s democracy movement. The first panel of witnesses analyzed the domestic and international significance of how the Chinese government reacted to the prize. 

Religious persecution by the Chinese Communist Party has been ongoing since 1949. However, in recent years, controls on religious freedom have been tightened.

The 2009 State Council’s National Human Rights Action Plan seems to show a new stance toward individual rights in China. The action plan condemns religious persecution, detention, and extortion of information by torture, yet these things still happen today. If anything, the CCP is less tolerant of religion.

“Legal Religion”

China's religious policies are contradictory. The National Human Rights Action Plan is supposed to guarantee freedom, but the CCP has laws regarding the illegalities of “evil cults.” What defines that term? The CCP is not forthcoming. They exploit the laws' vagueness in arresting religious practitioners they feel threatened by.

The Chinese Communist Party recognizes five religions: Buddhism, Islam, Daoism, Catholicism, and Protestantism. Other religions are illegal, and their practitioners are detained or jailed. Although the five religions mentioned above are recognized, the Religious Affairs Bureau maintains control over them. The RAB has institutions that govern each religion’s affairs. Opposition to the CCP these institutions could result in the faction being declared illegal.

Intolerance Towards Minority Religions

Prior to the 2008 Olympics, protests in Lhasa for religious and autonomous freedom turned into rioting. There have already been 5 self-immolations of Tibetan Buddhists who opposed the Communist Party’s stance on Tibet in 2011 alone. Falun Gong (a mixture of Qigong, Buddhism, and Daoism which was declared a “cult” by the CCP in 1995) practitioners have been “re-educated through labor” in Chinese jails, beaten, starved, and even executed for the past 15 years. Islam in Xinjiang is closely monitored: Government employees in the region cannot practice Islam, and teaching of the Koran in private is illegal. Several branches of Christianity have also been persecuted as “cults”.

Why does the Communist Party take such a hard stance toward religion?

Religion in China is growing rapidly: Currently, there are around 70 million Protestants, 12 million Catholics, 8 million Uighur Muslims, and 2.6 million Tibetan Buddhists, plus the millions of followers who practice “illegal” underground religions. Religion greatly influences its practitioners’ lives. The Communist Party fears religion’s influence on the public surpassing their own, which could result in the public opposing the CCP’s legitimacy and power. This is especially true in places like Xinjiang and Tibet, where religion and ethnicity are intertwined and very different from the Han Chinese perception. If these ethnic values and religions begin to override Communist Party ideals, the CCP’s rule could be jeopardized.

The Effects of Persecution on Society

In 2008, Chen Zhiping was abducted and sentenced to prison for eight years. After her arrest, she was denied a lawyer and her daughter was beaten after requesting court documents on the case. Chen was also attacked in prison and forcibly injected with drugs. Chen’s crime: practicing Falun Gong. Chen is one of many in China who are persecuted for their beliefs. The CCP routinely shrugs off criticisms of its human rights record, justifying its harsh policies with cultural relativism – individual rights are less important in China, because it is a traditionally collective society. However, the CCP's actions toward religious believers affect the society as a whole. When the CCP forces a religious follower into political reform, their entire family is torn apart, and they are persecuted by local cadres or shunned by the community. Persecution of religious followers also disrupts their fellow parish members, causing others to fear and resent the CCP’s policies. When tearing families and communities apart in religious persecution, the CCP is destabilizing its own society, which is what it fears.

Sources:

1.      Amnesty International Report. “Uighur Ethnic Identity Under Threat in China.” 2009.

2.      Falun Dafa Information Center Report. “Chen Zhenping: A Mother Imprisoned, Tortured.” October 20, 2010.

3.      Lai, H.H. “Religious Policies in Post-Totalitarian China: Maintaining Political Monopoly over a Reviving Society.” Journal of Chinese Political Science. 2006. Volume 11, issue 1. Pages 55-57.

4.      Reinstein, Ellen. “Turn the Other Cheek, or Demand an Eye for an Eye? Religious Persecution in China and an Effective Western Response.” Connecticut Journal of International Law. October 1, 2004.

As China’s one-child policy nears its 31^st anniversary, there is still no end in sight to these aggressive regulations. The policy, which is still strictly enforced by the Chinese government, began in 1979 and was scheduled to end September 25, 2010. Since the implementation of the policy, government crackdowns and social pressure to have a son have resulted in at least 50 million “missing” women. A traditional preference to have sons along with the one-child policy has led to sex-selection abortions and a major gender imbalance throughout the country. Unfortunately, many families feel they must resort to extreme measures in order to ensure a male heir and avoid breaking the one-child regulation. The growing gender gap poses the question- how have such a large number of women seemingly vanished while going unnoticed by the rest of the world?

What has been termed as “gendercide” continues to produce rippling effects throughout the country that threaten and devalue the lives of women and children. The conditions of the one-child policy have allowed human trafficking to thrive as unwanted girls and boys are traded as commodities. In July, an unprecedented raid by the CCP’s Ministry of Public Security unveiled a child trafficking ring that led to the suspension of over 300 suspects. At least 81 children were rescued, including 13 babies as young as 10 days to 4 months old. The Ministry reported the deployment of 2,600 police officers from 14 provinces in the July 20^th raid. The incident has only touched the surface of a major black market in which children are bought and sold as future wives, slave laborers and sex workers. As successful as this raid may have been, the root causes of child trafficking in China are still very much in place.

From his balcony in Shanghai, Feng Zhenghu greets petitioners who have traveled for assistance with their grievances.  For many, that is as close as they can get to the human rights activist, who has been under virtual house arrest for launching "Shanghai Expo of Unjust Cases," a website that used the problematic Shanghai Expo as a platform to critique the city government. 

Feng Zhenghu made headlines last year when he squatted in the Tokyo Narita International Airport for over three months, after being denied re-entry to China eight times.   He returned home in February and a few months later "Chinese authorities began restricting his movements."
 

A well-known advocate for Chinese petitioners and a self-taught lawyer, Feng Zhenghu insists that he is only demanding the observation of current laws by authorities.  He remains optimistic on the possibility of change, calling upon the public to "overcome our fear... and insist on the truth in life."  

It’s hard not to feel let down by the US-China Human Rights Dialogue which took place at the end of last week.  As many others have already pointed out, China doesn’t really take it seriously.  After all, they sent Chen Xu, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs Director General for International Organizations.  When you Google him, the Chen Xu in question doesn’t even come up on the first page of search results.  And as Sophie Richardson pointed out in her post for Foreign Policy, the “Chinese officials spend their visit just trying to run out the clock.” But as the previous eight years have taught us, a minor human rights dialogue is better than no dialogue at all.

The focus of the discussion was primarily around rule of law in China, undoubtedly a critical piece in the drive towards encouraging China to be a more responsible international stakeholder.  Ideally, these talks have set the scene for the continuation of the conversation in the US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED) taking place in China on May 24-25, but you can’t help but feel that the timing of the Human Rights Dialogue provides a convenient out for human rights to be sidelined during the S&ED. When I read the State Department briefing on the S&ED this morning, there was no mention of human rights, and no indication that human rights issues will be raised at the meeting. As Elizabeth Lynch of China Law & Policy has written, the Chinese government places much more importance on the S&ED, and human rights issues raised there, on Chinese soil, are likely to have much more of an actual impact. 

As the years go by, it makes less and less sense to separate the two dialogues anyway.  Specifically,

-On cybersecurity:  The US is just now waking up to the issue of cybersecurity.  There is good evidence to suggest that while China may not be engaging in direct state-sponsored hacking of foreign corporations, government networks, and human rights activists’ emails, there is at the very least tacit approval (dare I say encouragement?) of the practice.   Those hacking the Chinese government are punished.  Those hacking foreign governments are smiled upon.  Almost every single day I walk into the office to find emails in my inbox containing tracking software or malware intended to shut down my ability to do work.  My boss, Harry Wu, receives at least five such threats each day.  In the larger scheme of things, we’re the little people who are unimportant in these sorts of dialogues, but multinational corporations, many of whom are headquartered in the US, are facing similar difficulties.  It costs American businesses a huge amount of money and time to fight these threats.  Not to mention that it would be pretty catastrophic if Chinese hackers did something like shut down a major electrical grid or something like that, which they have been shown to be capable of doing.  (Read more after the jump)

Since the Tiananmen Square Massacre on June 4, 1989, the United States government has conducted 12 rounds of human rights dialogue with China.  During this time, while commitments were made, minimal achievement on the front of human rights actually occurred as a direct result of three factors: the decoupling of human rights from the strategic economic dialogue, the absence of any concrete benchmarks being created, and the inability of non-governmental organizations to participate in the process.  In the words of Kelley Currie from the 2049 Project, “Using a combination of incentives, coercion and cooptation, China has been incredibly successful in its long-running efforts to reshape the international discourse on its human rights record, and marginalize human rights advocacy directed at it.”

Earlier today China executed a British citizen for the first time in 50 years. Akmal Shaikh, reported to suffer from "severe mental illness", was arrested in 2007 for attempting to smuggle heroin into China from Tajikistan. 

In response to the execution, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued a statement strongly condemning China's refusal to grant clemency, especially given the uncertainty surrounding Shaikh's mental health status. China responded simply, "We express strong dissatisfaction and opposition to the British reaction.  We hope the British side will face this case squarely and not put new obstacles in the way of relations between Britain and China."

Furthermore, the extensive international criticism prompted China's "legal experts" to defend the execution as "legitimate" and in accordance with "China's Criminal Law".  Wang Mingliang, a professor of criminal law at Fudan University in Shanghai, even went as far as to say that Shaikh's execution had "nothing to do with human rights concerns." (Read more after the jump)