Serbia’s decision to detain practitioners of a persecuted faith in alignment with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has raised alarm in the United States, with one religious freedom watcher calling it a “Faustian deal.”
The spiritual discipline Falun Gong focuses on the tenets of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, and in the late 1990s had a following of between 70 million to 100 million in China.
Now, Beijing’s apparent ability to influence a European country to such a degree is worrying human rights advocates.
“In China, authorities ruthlessly persecute Falun Gong practitioners for their religious activities, with thousands facing arrest, imprisonment, and even death during incarceration. Sadly, this persecution extends far beyond China’s borders, too,” Eric Ueland, commissioner of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, told The Epoch Times.
“China’s government frequently engages in transnational repression to silence voices critical of the Chinese Communist Party and its gross religious freedom abuses. No government should acquiesce to China’s illiberal demands to repress its own citizens.”
Serbia’s actions also disturbed Katrina Lantos Swett, president of Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice.
Serbia seems willing to “clearly do the bidding of China” with no regard to the impact on its citizens, she told The Epoch Times’ sister media NTD.
“These are people who are law-abiding, who are actually a blessing to any community that they’re part of,” she said.
“But there can be no doubt about the fact that this was done, either at the direction of the CCP, or which is even more upsetting if this is the case, as an effort to show how much they want to please China, how willing they are to sort of curry the favor of this dictatorial, repressive regime.”
Serbia was a communist state until the 1990s when communist parties across Eastern Europe collapsed.
Under communism, authorities targeted people they considered suspicious under the pretext of “preventive detention.” One of the eight detainees, Falun Gong practitioner Dejan Markovic, said his detention had the same overtones.
After detaining the practitioners in anticipation of Xi’s visit, Mr. Markovic said the police chief of Belgrade told him that he knew they were good people.
“I will not question you. I don’t need to question you. But the district attorney asked us for 48 hours detention,” the police chief said, Mr. Markovic told The Epoch Times.
Serbia’s choice to “side with the CCP’s suppression of Falun Gong overseas” was “appalling,” according to Falun Dafa Information Center spokesperson Zhang Erping.
“It is a shame that Serbia, which was a communist state a short while ago, is now reaching a Faustian deal with the CCP,” he told The Epoch Times. “History won’t look kindly at those who collaborate with a regime that has murdered some 60 million innocent lives over the years, particularly given its horrific crime of taking organs by force from Falun Gong practitioners.”
What happened in Serbia demonstrates that the Chinese influence campaign against dissidents is “far more extensive and far more insidious than people believed,” said Ms. Lantos Swett.
“We need to call it out,” she said. “China, for all of its strength, also has a very thin skin, they do not like being criticized. And they are very aware of and sensitive about their global reputation.”
Political figures, social media influencers, and others with cultural sway, she said, can do a better job bringing the issue to light. If anything deserves protest, she said, it’s the Chinese regime, “which has engaged in more pervasive persecution and more cruel repression of more people than any other country.”
