US Commission Highlights Beijing’s Religious Repression

A young ethnic Uyghur boy looks out from his home in the Uyghur area in the city of Urumqi in China's Xinjiang region on July 12, 2009. Peter Parks/AFP via Getty Images

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) held a virtual hearing on Dec. 14 to explore the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) religious freedom violations in China and abroad, while highlighting how Beijing advances its repression via technology and amplifies its malign foreign influence via lobbying. Five expert witnesses from human rights organizations offered their insights.

During the Q&A session, expert witnesses offered a sobering moment when they answered affirmatively to all questions posed by USCIRF Commissioner Frank Wolf.

“Is it accurate to say that Hikvision cameras are in the camps that are persecuting Uyghurs?”

“Do we agree that there is genocide against the Uyghurs?”

“Is it accurate to say that Hikvision has former members of Congress lobbying for them?”

Lobbying

“I am also greatly concerned about China’s malign foreign influence here in the United States—most insidiously through its lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill,“ Commissioner Wolf spoke about the CCP’s lobbying efforts in his opening remarks. ”I am very disappointed that some former Members of Congress have decided to work as agents to lobby for the Chinese government and its state-owned enterprises, such as Hikvision and iFlytek, that are under suspicion of complicity in the government’s persecution of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. Their involvement in such efforts is simply outrageous!”

Zack Smith, a legal fellow at Heritage Foundation, said that the CCP not only has been increasing its influence in the United States through lobbying activities but also “sought to influence the U.S. policies at the state and local levels.”

“A recent Heritage Foundation report makes clear that China’s attempt to influence state and local governments have been ongoing for decades and are widespread,” Smith said. “Never before in our nation’s history has a foreign adversary had such deep in-roads in the U.S. state and local politics.”

Techno-Authoritarianism

In his opening remark, Nury Turkel, USCIRF chair said, “Uyghur Muslims, for example, have long fallen victim to China’s techno-authoritarianism and transnational repression.”

He said the Chinese regime has “used advanced surveillance technology as an integral part of its repression in Xinjiang. Chinese tech companies, both state-owned enterprises and private companies such as Huawei and others, play a vital role in facilitating and implementing the CCP’s oppressive policies in the Uyghur region.”

USCIRF Chair Nury Turkel (L) and his brother, Mamutjan Turkel, in Turkey in 2014. Courtesy of Turkel family

Yaqiu Wang, a senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch, said that since 2016 under CCP head Xi Jinping, China’s religious repression intensified, and that “technology-based censorship and surveillance are essential to religious repression in China.”

The WeChat app provides a powerful tool for the Chinese regime to censor and surveil overseas Chinese people. “Nearly everyone who has a smartphone in China has to use this app,” she said because the Chinese regime has banned so many international social media and messaging apps.

“So anyone outside of China who wants to connect with anybody in China has to use WeChat,” she said, adding that they then fall into the regime’s “machine of censorship and surveillance.”

Wang also gave examples of American technology companies contributing to the Chinese regime’s repression.

“In 2021, Apple took down a popular Quran App and Bible App in China’s [Apple] App Store at the request of Chinese officials. … Apple has, over the years, taken down hundreds of VPNs, seriously impeding the ability for users in China to access free information.”

Surveillance cameras are seen near the headquarters of Chinese video surveillance firm Hikvision in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China, on May 22, 2019. Stringer/Reuters

In December 2017, Human Rights Watch revealed that U.S. medical company Thermo Fisher Scientific had sold DNA sequencers to police in Xinjiang. Just over a year later in early 2019, Thermo Fisher Scientific announced that they would stop the sales.

Wang said that later they also found that Thermo Fisher Scientific also sold the technology to police in Tibet.

She said, “Falun gong practitioners continue to face severe repression. In January, a [Falun Gong] practitioner Xu Na was sentenced to eight years in prison merely for sending information about COVID-19 restriction to an overseas Falun Gong affiliated website.”

Bob Fu, President and Founder of ChinaAid Association, highlighted the “increased oppression and control of Christians” through technology.

“Techno-authoritarianism in China has begun to reach a new extreme under Xi Jinping,” Fu said, adding that the new social media regulation in China prohibits individuals and organizations to “post any religious information on the internet unless obtained permission from the provincial level government.”

He said that the content posted must conform to the CCP’s political agenda, and must encourage others to “love the country and abide by the law.”

Forced Inter-Ethnic Marriage

Louisa Greve, director of Global Advocacy of the Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP), highlighted an aspect of the CCP’s genocide against the Uyghurs.

“UHRP has published a report on forced and incentivized interethnic interfaith marriage. We found extensive documentation that the officials in the Uyghur region had been instructed to promote interethnic ‘contact, exchange, and mingling,’ just like in Tibet.”

A photo from a report by the Uyghur Human Rights Project showing a village team standing with a newlywed Uyghur-Han couple in Aksu County, a Uyghur-majority prefecture in southern East Turkistan. Screenshot by The Epoch Times

Greve showed a wedding photo from the UHRP report showing a Uyghur bride and Han groom posing with village officials. They were holding signs showing the 10,000 Yuan ($1,434) reward that the couple is receiving as an incentive for interethnic marriage.

“The budget of these payments appears in county-level government documents,” Greve said.

‘Oppression Is in Its DNA’

In a prerecorded video, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) pointed out that “the CCP has been attacking religious freedom since its founding a century ago. Oppression is in its DNA.”

“Today Beijing’s assault is more violent and systematic than ever. … Party agents are also targeting ethnic Chinese believers here in the U.S., because they believe faith undermines the legitimacy of the communist party,” he said.

“This is a threat to American national security and basic human rights. We must do everything we can to counter this.”