The statement comes after repeated reports outlined Beijing’s ongoing repression and harassment of religious followers.
The U.S. government plans to impose visa restrictions on Chinese officials involved in the repression of religious and ethnic minority groups in China, according to the State Department.
“Today, the State Department is taking steps to impose visa restrictions on People’s Republic of China (PRC) officials for their involvement in repression of marginalized religious and ethnic communities,” department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a July 12
statement. “The PRC has not lived up to its commitments to respect and protect human rights.”
As examples, he cited “the ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, the erosion of fundamental freedoms in Hong Kong, persistent human rights abuses in Tibet, and transnational repression around the world.”
Mr. Miller didn’t identify the officials who face visa restrictions or say how many people may be affected.
The statement comes after repeated reports outlined Beijing’s ongoing repression and harassment of religious followers and amid mounting calls in Congress and elsewhere for action to protect repressed groups in China.
The State Department released its 2023
report on international religious freedom last month. The report, citing nongovernmental organizations and media reports, found that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to impose strict control over religious groups and restricts the freedom of religious followers that it considers a threat to the CCP’s interests.
Adherents of these faith groups face harassment, torture, arrest, detainment, physical abuse, forced indoctrination in CCP ideology, or even death, according to the report.
In a
report published in May, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom indicated that the communist regime in China was among the world’s “worst violators” of its people’s religious freedom and that it was among the “most active perpetrators” of cross-border repression and other malign activities abroad.
The commission’s report indicated that in 2023, religious freedom in China worsened as the regime pushed forward the “sinicization of religion,” demanding that all major religious groups comply with the CCP’s ideology and policies.
“Sinicization requires groups to follow the CCP’s Marxist interpretation of religion, including by altering religious scriptures and doctrines to conform to that interpretation,” the report reads.
It also found that “organs are harvested from Falun Gong and Uyghurs, some while still alive.”
Last month, the House
passed the Falun Gong Protection
Act to combat the CCP’s crimes of organ harvesting and to end the decades-long persecution of the spiritual group, also known as Falun Dafa. Last year, the House approved the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting
Act of 2023.
The commission recommended that the U.S. federal government “continue imposing sanctions, in coordination with partners, to target Chinese officials and entities responsible for severe religious freedom violations.” It also urged Congress to ban foreign lobbying by agents representing the Chinese regime and its state-affiliated commercial entities that undermine religious freedom and related human rights.
The commission also called on the State Department to
redesignate China as a “
country of particular concern“ for “engaging in systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom” as outlined in the International Religious Freedom Act.
Washington often uses visa restrictions to target Chinese officials’ involvement in human rights violations. In August 2023, the State Department
imposed such restrictions on Chinese officials because of their role in the forcible assimilation of more than 1 million Tibetan children in government-run boarding schools.
In May, the State Department also
imposed visa restrictions on Chinese and Hong Kong officials over the guilty verdict handed down on 14 Hong Kong pro-democracy activists under the Beijing-imposed National Security Law.
