Rogue Nation

China's crackdown on Uighurs spreads to even mild critics
By GERRY SHIH
In this photo taken early Dec 27, 2017 and released by China Aid, Li Aijie poses for a photo with one of two photos she has of her husband Zhang Haitao after authorities confiscate her electronic devices after arriving in the U.S. in Midland, Texas. Li is seeking political asylum in the U.S. Zhang who was sentenced to 19 years in prison had been a rare voice in China, a member of the Han ethnic majority and salesman by day who complained on social media about government policies he said were unfair to Muslim minority Uighurs. 

Zhang Haitao was a rare voice in China, a member of the ethnic Han majority who for years had criticized the government on social media for its treatment of the minority Muslim Uighurs.
Zhang's wife had long feared some sort of backlash despite her husband's relative obscurity. 

He was a working-class electronics salesman, unknown even to most Uighur activists. 

So she worried that authorities might block his social media accounts, or maybe detain him. 

Instead he was arrested and prosecuted for subversion and espionage. 

His punishment: 19 years in prison.
"They wanted to make an example of him, to scare anyone who might question what they do in the name of security," Zhang's wife, Li Aijie, told The Associated Press earlier this week, one day after she arrived in the United States and asked for political asylum. 

"Even someone who knows nothing about law would know that his punishment made no sense."
Elsewhere in China, Zhang would have been sentenced to no more than three years, said his lawyer, Li Dunyong, and may not have been prosecuted at all.
But East Turkestan, the tense northwestern region where most Uighurs live, has been enveloped in recent years in a vast dragnet of police surveillance, which authorities insist is needed to root out separatism and Islamic extremism. 

Zhang, who moved to East Turkestan from central Henan province more than a decade ago in search of work, wondered in his social media posts whether these policies were stoking resentment among Uighurs. 

He warned that China's restrictions on the Uighurs' religious practices risked sparking an insurgency.
But questioning government policies in Xinjiang has become an untouchable third rail in today's China.
Court records say Zhang was convicted of sending 274 posts from 2010 to 2015 on Twitter and the Chinese social media service WeChat that "resisted, attacked and smeared" the Communist Party and its policies, earning him 15 years in prison for inciting subversion of state power. 

He was given another five years for talking to foreign reporters and providing photos of the intense police presence in the streets of Xinjiang. 

That, the court said, amounted to providing intelligence about China's anti-terror efforts to foreign organizations.
The court said it would combine the two punishments and sentence him to 19 years in prison.
He was convicted in January 2016. 

An appeals court in December 2016 refused to hear his petition, noting he had never expressed regret or admitted guilt.

Hoping to draw attention to Zhang's plight, Li provided her husband's court documents and letters from jail to the AP, as well as her own account.

The daughter of a farming family in Henan's hardscrabble hill country, Li met Zhang in 2011 after stumbling across a personal ad he had arranged to have placed in a local park where singles sought partners. 

The flier said he sold wireless routers and listed his modest height: 168 centimeters (5-foot-6). 

On their first date, when Zhang was back home in Henan, he wore a jacket with threadbare cuffs but showed Li his identity card in an awkward attempt to prove he was genuine.
That simple directness was something she grew to love, Li said, but it was also Zhang's downfall. 

He had been repeatedly warned by police about his social media activity, but he always ignored them.
When the authorities finally arrested him in 2015, they told Li he was suspected of inciting ethnic hatred. 

The charges were raised to subversion and espionage, Li suspects, after he refused to confess. 

In a letter he wrote to Li and his sister earlier this year, Zhang described how Nelson Mandela, who spent nearly three decades in prison, had become an inspiration.
"Life must have greater meaning beyond the material. Our mouths are not just for eating, but also for speaking out," Zhang wrote.
While the severity of Zhang's sentence stands out, others in the region have been punished for mild criticism.
Ma Like, a Muslim hostel owner in the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar, was accused in April of "propagating extremism" because he had retweeted two Weibo posts — one about how Chinese policies were alienating Uighurs, the other a veiled reference to restrictions on the Islamic headdress — according to two of Ma's friends, who provided copies of Ma's indictment and spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of government retaliation.
The prominent Uighur scholar Ilham Tohti was handed a life sentence in 2014 on charges of fanning ethnic hatred, advocating violence and instigating terror on a website he ran. 

He, too, was known as a moderate who argued against Uighur separatism and stressed the need for dialogue.
But when it comes to East Turkestan, calling for public debate amounts to an intolerable act of defiance, said Wang Lixiong, a Han Chinese writer and dissident.
"The government removes the middle road so it leaves two extremes," Wang said. 

"You're either their mortal enemy or their slave."
Zhang was arrested when Li was three months pregnant. 

She gave birth to their son two years ago, while he was being held in a desert prison. 

She returned home to Henan to raise him and began blogging and speaking to the overseas media.
The authorities tried to silence Li, pounding on her front door as she did a phone interview, for example, and threatening to derail the careers of her two brothers, low-level government workers.
Li's family begged her to divorce Zhang, even give up their child.
When words didn't sway her, in October her siblings and parents beat her, leaving her bruised on the family home's floor.
"I cannot hate them," Li said. 

"They were trying to resist enormous pressure. But after that, I had nowhere to go."
A month ago, she sneaked away and made her way to Bangkok. 

With the help of the U.S.-based organization China Aid, she flew to Texas, where a host family had been found for her, and where she hopes to start a new life with her son.
When she files her asylum paperwork, she lists the boy's legal name.
But in quiet moments, she calls him by his nickname: Xiao Man De La.

"Little Mandela."

China's horrifying religious oppression ‘most tyrannical’ in 40 years

China is repeatedly breaking its own laws as it continues to persecute Christians in one of the most tyrannical years for the regime

By Katie Mansfield

Xi Jinping’s Chinese Communist Party have launched a major crackdown on religion in recent weeks in an attempt to oppress religious freedom and exercise control.
The despotic regime has banned Christians from praying, singing hymns, removed crosses from buildings and arrested people for attending worship.
In a scathing report, charity China Aid noted there has been an increase in persecution.
The Chinese Government Persecution of Christians and Churches in China report found there has been a 4.74 increase in persecution in 2016 compared to last year.
With the number of abuses cases, unjust arrest and persecuted individuals on the up.
The charity said: “Persecution campaigns made 2016 one of the most tyrannical years since the Cultural Revolution.”

Echoing the revolution, which aimed to purge capitalist elements from the communist regime, Xi Jinping has overseen a year of chaos for China’s Christians.
The report found China is not only breaching its own laws but also international human rights.
The report said: “The cross demolition movement, which began in 2014 as part of a beautification campaign known as Three Rectifications and One Demolition, continued in Zhejiang province during 2016.
"Although official rhetoric claims the operation intends to address ‘illegal structures,’ it specifically discriminated against Christian churches and imposed strictures on the crosses that adorned the exterior of their buildings. In 2016, the number of crosses demolished surpassed 1,800.

“In addition to previous restrictions on religious activity, Henan province published a work plan devising to bring 'illegal' Catholic and Protestant churches in line with the Party’s ideologies.
"According to the official document, the authorities plan to manage church meetings and force the congregations to eradicate all religious symbols and become more socialist.
“This campaign echoes the new political trend set out in a proposed revision of the Regulations on Religious Affairs, which was introduced by the State Council earlier this month.
“The revision introduces tighter control on peaceful religious activities, such as punishing house church meetings by imprisoning Christians or heavily fining the church leaders, forbidding religious adherents from attending conferences or trainings abroad, and barring minors from receiving religious education.

“These measures violate China’s own Constitution, which guarantees religious liberty and condemns discriminating against religious and non-religious citizens and breaches the country’s pledges to adhere to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child.”
Christians have also been placed under surveillance, house churches disbanded and there have been reports of torture taking place in prison.
As previously reported by Express.co.uk pastor Yang Hua’s lawyers say he has been repeatedly tortured in prison with proseection lawyers threatening to kill him.

China Aid says international governments must now hold the regime to account and have presented the report to the European Parliament.
The report said: “China continuously violates its own laws and international statutes safeguarding religious freedom in favor of promoting a socialist agenda, forcing religious devotees to choose between certain persecution and disregarding their deeply-held beliefs.
"Additionally, it prosecutes lawyers who attempt to defend the rights of religious practitioners, completely disregarding the rule of law. International governments must persuade China to free those it unjustly holds behind bars.”

China Seeks Tighter Grip in Wake of a Religious Revival

By IAN JOHNSON

Ethnic Lisu heading to a Christian church in April in Fugong, in Yunnan Province. The Chinese government is expected to enact regulations tightening its oversight of religion in the coming days.

BEIJING — The finances of religious groups will come under greater scrutiny.
Theology students who go overseas could be monitored more closely.
And people who rent or provide space to illegal churches may face heavy fines.
These are among the measures expected to be adopted when the Chinese government enacts regulations tightening its oversight of religion in the coming days, the latest move by Xi Jinping to strengthen the Communist Party’s control over society and combat foreign influences it considers subversive.
The rules, the first changes in more than a decade to regulations on religion, also include restrictions on religious schools and limits on access to foreign religious writings, including on the internet. 
They were expected to be adopted as early as Friday, at the end of a public comment period, though there was no immediate announcement by the government.
Religion has blossomed in China despite the Communist Party’s efforts to control and sometimes suppress it, with hundreds of millions embracing the nation’s major faiths — Buddhism, Christianity, Islam and Taoism — over the past few decades.
But many Chinese worship outside the government’s official churches, mosques and temples, in unauthorized congregations that the party worries could challenge its authority.

Tu Shouzhe, a Protestant lay leader, standing on the roof of his church in Muyang, Zhejiang Province, last year, hours after government workers cut down its cross.

A draft of the new regulations was published in September, several months after Xi convened a rare leadership conference on religious policy and urged the party to be on guard against foreign efforts to infiltrate China using religion.
“It could mean that if you are not part of the government church, then you won’t exist anymore,” said Xiao Yunyang, one of 24 prominent pastors and lawyers who signed a public statement last month criticizing the regulations as vague and potentially harmful.
The regulations follow the enactment of a law on nongovernmental organizations that increased financial scrutiny of civil society groups and restricted their contact with foreign organizations in a similar way, as well as an aggressive campaign to limit the visibility of churches by tearing down crosses in one eastern province where Christianity has a wide following.
But the rules on religion also pledge to protect holy sites from commercialization, allow spiritual groups to engage in charitable work and make government oversight more transparent.
That suggests Xi wants closer government supervision of religious life in China but is willing to accept its existence.
“There’s been a recognition that religion can be of use, even in a socialist society,” said Thomas Dubois, a professor at the Australian National University in Canberra.
“There is an attempt, yes, to carve out the boundaries, but to leave a particular protected space for religion.”

Uighur men performing Muslim prayers in September in the far western region of Xinjiang. The rules include restrictions on religious schools and limits on access to foreign religious writings, including on the internet.

Although the governing Communist Party requires its 85 million members to be atheist, its leaders have lauded some aspects of religious life for instilling morality in the broader population and have issued directives ratcheting back the hard-line attacks on religion that characterized the Mao era.
Over the past decades this has permitted a striking religious renaissance in China, including a construction boom in temples, mosques and churches.
Christianity is widely considered the fastest-growing faith; there are as many as 67 million adherents now, at least half of whom worship in unregistered churches that have proliferated across China, sometimes called underground or house churches.
The new regulations are more explicit about the party’s longstanding requirement that all religious groups register with the government, and the most vocal opposition so far has come from Protestant leaders unwilling to do so.
“These regulations effectively push house churches into taking on an illegal character,” said Yang Xingquan, a lawyer who is one of the signatories of the public statement.
“This is very clear.”
Many Christians contend that government-approved churches are tools of the state, as sermons are vetted to avoid contentious political and social issues and clergy are appointed by the party rather than congregants or, in the case of the Catholic Church, the Vatican.

Mosques in Linxia, in Gansu Province, last year. The rules pledge to protect holy sites from commercialization, allow spiritual groups to do charitable work and make government oversight more transparent.

The new rules call for more stringent accounting practices at religious institutions, threaten “those who provide the conditions for illegal religious activities” with fines and confiscation of property, and require the many privately run seminaries in China to submit to state control.
Other articles in the regulations restrict contact with religious institutions overseas, which could affect Chinese Catholics studying theology in the Philippines, Protestants attending seminaries in the United States, or Muslims learning at madrasas in Malaysia or Pakistan.
Overseas churches and activists with ties to Chinese Christians have been scathing in their attacks on the new regulations.
In its annual report on religious persecution released on Wednesday, China Aid, a group based in Texas, said they violated the Constitution, which guarantees freedom of religious belief.
The regulations also say for the first time that religion must not harm national security, which could give security services in China greater authority to target spiritual groups with ties overseas.
Chinese officials have already banned residents from attending some religious conferences in Hong Kong and increased oversight of mainland programs run by Hong Kong pastors, raising fears within the city’s vibrant Christian community.
For traditional Chinese religions such as Buddhism and Taoism — which are practiced by 300 million to 400 million people and which the party views more favorably — the regulations appear intended to address a different problem: crass commercialization.
Temples are often forced by local governments to charge entrance fees, which mostly go to the state and not the place of worship.
About 600 people were recently detained at Mount Wutai, a Buddhist pilgrimage site in a northeastern city, for posing as monks to hustle money by fortunetelling, begging for alms and performing street shows, the state news media reported.
The new regulations say spiritual sites should be “safeguarded” from tourism and development.
The rules also require local governments to decide on applications to build houses of worship within 30 days and to explain denials in writing.
Scholars caution that it is unclear how strictly the regulations will be enforced, noting that local officials have often tolerated and sometimes encouraged religious activity that is formally illegal, including house churches.