Federal Commission Commends State Department for Visa Restriction Policy Against Chinese Rights Abusers

Asif Mahmood, commissioner of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, speaks during a rally calling for the end of the Chinese Communist Party’s 25 years of ongoing persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China at the National Mall in Washington on July 11, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

The U.S. religious freedom watchdog has applauded the State Department over its decision to impose visa restrictions on Chinese officials over the repression of certain ethnic and religious groups in China.

Two commissioners of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF)—Asif Mahmood and Vicky Hartzler—took to X on July 15, saying that it was important to hold China’s communist regime accountable for its human rights violations.

“USCIRF commends [the State Department] for its ongoing efforts to hold Chinese officials accountable for genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs, & other gross human rights abuses against Tibetans, & other religious minorities,” Mr. Mahmood wrote.

“We need to do anything and everything to help #Uyghurs in China who are being persecuted just because of their determination to practice their religion #Islam.”

The State Department announced the visa restrictions on July 12, saying that the Chinese regime “has not lived up to its commitments to respect and protect human rights.” The new policy was issued three months after the agency released its annual report on the regime’s human rights, listing a litany of abuses committed by Beijing.

The report highlighted cases of Chinese prison officials force-feeding detainees, public security officials detaining individuals “beyond the period allowed by law” and throwing people into psychiatric facilities for “conditions” that had no basis in psychiatry, and police officers forcibly entering homes without obtaining warrants as required by the law.

Additionally, Chinese authorities also subjected individuals to house arrest and extralegal detention facilities such as “black jails,” the report stated.

In China’s far-western region of Xinjiang, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials have “forcibly lived” in Uyghurs’ homes and monitored their families, according to the report.

Under the Trump administration, the State Department in 2021 determined that the regime had been committing “genocide” and “crimes against humanity” against Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

CCP’s United Front

“The U.S. [government] must continue to pursue accountability for [freedom of religion or belief] violations in #China, especially against the #CCP’s United Front Work Department which oversees & enforces the state’s most repressive religion policies,” Ms. Hartzler wrote.

Beijing has an extensive “united front work” apparatus, which is directed by its central agency, the United Front Work Department.

Last year, the House Select Committee on the CCP released a memo warning Americans about the CCP’s “united front work” operations inside the United States.

“United front work damages U.S. interests through legal and illegal technology transfer, surveillance of Chinese diaspora communities, promotion of favorable narratives about the PRC [People’s Republic of China] through ostensibly independent voices, and the neutralization or harassment of critics of the CCP,” the memo reads.

In May, the USCIRF, in an annual report, called on the U.S. government to impose sanctions on Chinese officials and entities involved in severe religious freedom violations, particularly those within the CCP’s United Front Work Department.

Victims

USCIRF maintains a freedom of religion or belief (FoRB) victims database. As of March, it included 798 FoRB victims in China, including 217 Falun Gong practitioners, 191 “unspecified/other Muslim,” 93 Tibetan Buddhists, 34 Protestants, and 5 Catholics.

Among the victims is Gulshan Abbas, a retired Uyghur medical doctor who has been detained in China since 2018. According to USCIRF, she was sentenced to 20 years in prison in March 2018 after being convicted on several charges, including allegedly “gathering a crowd to disrupt social order.”

Another victim is Zhou Deyong, a Falun Gong practitioner who was sentenced to an eight-year jail term in April 2023. His wife and son currently reside in Florida.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline that encourages its adherents to live by moral teachings based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. By 1999, according to official estimates, at least 70 million people had taken up the practice. The CCP perceived the large number of Falun Gong adherents as a threat to its rule and launched a mass persecution campaign against the practice in the same year.

The persecution continues today, and millions have been detained inside prisons, labor camps, and other facilities, with hundreds of thousands tortured while incarcerated and untold numbers killed, according to the Falun Dafa Information Center.