Red Star Rising
But is Anyone Watching?
Part 2: Persecution Pays and Pays and Pays
James F. Gauss
China’s future is for the Chinese people to decide. Yet no nation is exempt
from the demands of human dignity. All the world’s people, including the
people of China, should be free to choose how they live, how they worship,
and how they work.
President George W. Bush
Beijing, China, February 21, 2002
Does Freedom Exist in China? Do you need more evidence and reasons to be wary of China and to modify your support of her practices and intent? In 2000, there were an estimated 90+ million Christians in China (up from 4 million in 1949). The vast majority of these are Protestants and Catholics that have been forced “underground” just so they can enjoy the normal practices of their faith, such as prayer, Bible study and worship. Despite decades of the overwhelming documentation of persecution up to the present from those inside China, Jiang Zemin, President of the People’s Republic of China and General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China denies that such persecution exists or ever existed.
“I want to explain that since the founding of People’s Republic of China [in 1949], all our constitutions, various versions, have provided for the freedom of religious belief. In China there are many religions...And their religious faiths are protected by our Constitution.” President Jiang said this with a straight face on February 21, 2002 during President Bush’s visit to China.
“Whatever religion people believe in,” he asserted, “they have to abide by the law. So some of the law-breakers have been detained [read: brutalized] because of their violation of law, not because of their religious belief...I have no right interfering in the judicial affairs, because of judicial independence.”
In February, 2002, the Committee for Investigation on Persecution of Religion in China, headquartered in New York, obtained a 141-page report (of which I received a copy) made up of seven incriminating top-secret Chinese government documents smuggled out of China that clearly illustrated China’s systematic and repressive campaigns against Christians, the Falun Gong meditation practitioners and other religious groups in China.
“These documents provide irrefutable evidence that China remains determined to eradicate all religion it cannot control, using extreme tactics,” commented Nina Shea, director of the Center for Religious Freedom.
“That individuals should be singled out for brutal treatment for their religious beliefs is a disgrace in this age,” remarked Stuart Windsor, National Director of Christian Solidarity Worldwide.
In a recent Beijing-sanctioned crackdown on house churches in twenty Chinese provinces, 129 Christians were reportedly killed, almost 24,000 arrested and a little over 4,000 sentenced to China’s infamous “re-education” camps.
Barely had President Bush set foot in Washington in his return home from Red China, then President Jiang was ordering the execution of imprisoned members of the peaceful Falun Gong. “If China wishes to be regarded as a respectable international player,” Windsor has advised, “she must urgently reform her laws and policies in accordance with her voluntarily accepted international obligations. Until this is done, the international community has both practical and moral reason not to trust China as a credible and reliable international partner.”
Despite such revelations, the communist leadership in Beijing continues to pursue an aggressive public relations campaign to convince the West that such religious persecution does not exist, and that if it does, it is only because of abnormal religious practices by dangerous criminals and cultists.
Robin Munro, a China authority in London, stated that the recent extensive documentation was “quite Draconian” and declared “implacable hostility” toward designated religious groups Beijing considered undesirable or a threat to their iron-fisted rule. While China’s leadership can espouse that religious freedom exists in China, it only tolerates state-sanctioned churches and groups that will follow communist-implemented dictates. Such “freedom” has forced tens of millions of Chinese Christians “underground” just so they can have a prayer meeting or Bible study.
Of course, the excuse for any such crackdown is blamed on the United States and the West. “Hostile Western powers headed by the U.S. have hastened to carry out their strategies of Westernizing, splitting and weakening our country,” a Chinese official of public security has said.
During his China visit in late February, President Bush called for China to permit religious freedom. However, in another demonstration that the PRC is not ready for prime time world inclusion, the New China News Agency cut out about half of the speech---editing out the President’s comments on freedom and faith---before broadcasting it to the Chinese public.
Persecution Run Amok. Since 1949 it has been reliably estimated that over 90 million Chinese citizens have been sent to forced labor camps or “laogai.” These camps are barbaric and many inmates never make it back home again. Christians and Roman Catholic priests are reportedly sent to laogais where they are forced to work while standing in vats of acid. In fact, during Jiang’s speech of denials during President Bush’s visit, he was repeatedly questioned by a Western journalist about the current imprisonment of over fifty Chinese bishops of the Roman Catholic church. He responded with his patented-for-Western-consumption “freedom of religious belief” babble as noted previously.
Forced abortion continues to run rampant in Mainland China under the coercive and demanding rule of Jiang’s leadership and his subordinates. Tens of millions of children have been slaughtered. China’s “one child” policy has made brothers and sisters illegal. While similar practices in Nazi Germany were deemed as “crimes against humanity” by the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, China’s abhorrent practices of infanticide and brutalization of women are either overlooked or declared as “remarkable achievements.”
“China has every reason to feel proud of and pleased with its remarkable achievements made in its family planning policy,” marveled Nafis Sadik, former executive director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). “The country could offer its experiences and special expert[ise] to help other countries.”
Involuntary sterilization of women is commonplace and often ruthless. According to numerous Western human rights organizations, such as the Population Research Institute, Center for Religious Freedom and the Committee for Investigation on Persecution of Religion in China, oppression and brutalization of women accompanies religious persecution throughout the country. For over twenty years the U.S.-supported UNFPA has partnered with nations who brutalize and degrade women. Last year, in response to alleged and documented human rights atrocities in China the UNFPA sent an “impartial” review team to China made up of only current and former UNFPA employees and officials of China’s Population Control organization. Not surprisingly, they found no abuses or complaints among China’s peasants.
Under Presidents Reagan and Bush, Sr., U.S. tax dollars were kept from the UNFPA, but President Clinton funded the organization in all eight years of his presidency. In January, current President Bush was also considering withholding a $34 million grant to the UNFPA.
The slaughter of female babies up to two years of age is routinely practiced by local party bosses in order to ensure the “one child” policy is enforced or to maintain the more desirable birthright of male children.
Organ harvesting from convicts---many innocent victims of oppression rather than wrong-doing---has been widely publicized in the West and spuriously denied by Chinese officials or occasionally weakly defended. Organs of executed prisoners are immediately “harvested” by Chinese “doctors” as the unwilling “donor” lays in a pool of blood from his bullet-riddled cranium. Sometimes, in order to get the freshest organs, the condemned convict is placed on a table and anesthetized and his vitals removed while he is still alive. Chinese festivals, according to witnesses, are a prime time for mass executions for such purposes. Sales of human organs from unwilling volunteers is a big money maker for the PRC.
Despite Jiang’s assurances to the West that China offers freedom of religion, the reality is that the PRC only accepts state-approved churches or religious groups that will follow the communist dictate of pabulum religion so as not to be a threat to the communist agenda. All others, by the millions, are rooted out, harassed, and dislocated from families. Persecution of Christians, not freedom of religious expression, is the rule of the land. Under the watchful eye and edict of the PRC, local officials of the Communist Party and their hired thugs routinely and systematically ferret out Christians for ostracism, destruction of their property, taking away of their jobs or businesses, burning their churches, beatings, torture, imprisonment and murder. Thousands each year are sent to “re-education” camps for forced indoctrination on the correct submission to the state.
And what dastardly crime against the state might these Christians have committed to warrant such abusive treatment? Why they dared to have a PRC-banned or non-sanctioned religious meeting, such as a prayer meeting, worship service, or Bible study.
Exporting Persecution. China’s rape and pillaging of tiny neighbor, Tibet, and the exile of the 14th Dalai Lama to India in 1959, has been well documented. But perhaps less known by Americans is communist China’s long-standing methodical support of the genocidal persecution of the Hmong people in Laos and the Montagnards in Vietnam and other ethnic groups in Southeast Asia. Communist regimes in these countries are awash with the PRC’s and PLA’s assistance and encouragement. Many of the Hmong and Montagnards are God-fearing people whose hill tribes sacrificially and at great price aided the U.S. war effort in Vietnam. Yet, we have turned our backs on them and have ignored their slaughter.
China supports and arms the Burmese regime for their genocidal campaign against the Christian Karen hill people of eastern Burma.
Members of the Chinese-supported Pathet Lao communist government in Laos have been witnessed bashing the heads of Hmong babies against trees, impaling women or throwing them off high cliffs. But, then again, we don’t want to know that.
____________________________________________
James F. Gauss is a free lance writer, frequent public speaker and the author of Christians Confronting Crisis, We the People, Volumes I, II (historical document series) and other books. He may be reached at ampatriot@charter.net.
Copyright 2002. James F. Gauss. All Rights Reserved.
Related Information
