Freedom of Religion

The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) government is currently considering a draft regulation that would tighten formal legal prohibitions on children's freedom of religion and parents' right to impart religious teachings. A draft XUAR regulation on the protection of minors, submitted for deliberation to the Standing Committee of the XUAR People's Congress in June, adds new language that elaborates on and tightens enforcement of an existing XUAR legal prohibition on children's freedom of religion that already constitutes the harshest known legal provision on the issue within China.

Local governments in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) reported throughout early 2009 on measures to strengthen control over religious activity. Measures include carrying out a campaign aimed at "weakening religious consciousness," implementing rules to expel religious leaders for missing political study classes, monitoring students' activities during school vacations, and holding open trials to punish "illegal religious activity" and demonstrate its consequences to the public. (See below for more details). The reports indicate a continuing trend in heightened repression over religion in the region, which according to official statistics has a majority Muslim population. The measures also form part of broader efforts in the XUAR to strengthen security and guard against perceived threats to stability. The XUAR government identifies "religious extremism" and "illegal religious activity" as key threats to the region.

Authorities disrupted several Protestant house church gatherings in December 2008, in some cases detaining church leaders, according to reports from the China Aid Association (CAA), an organization that monitors conditions for religious freedom in China. The reports come amid calls from local governments in late 2008 to stem Protestant house church gatherings and meetings of other unregistered religious groups. The CAA also issued a report in December on the demolition of a registered church and provided information on new developments in ongoing cases.

Recent reports include:

China's state-controlled Catholic church held a meeting in December to celebrate the Chinese church's policy of appointing bishops independently of Holy See practices for designating the religious leaders. The Catholic Patriotic Association (CPA) and the Chinese Catholic Bishops Conference, the two Communist Party-controlled organizations that lead China's state-sanctioned Catholic church, convened the meeting on December 19 in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the church's policy of "self-selecting" and "self-ordaining" bishops, according to a December 19 Xinhua report.

Continuing a trend in which the PRC Criminal Law is used to persecute Falun Gong practitioners, a Beijing court sentenced a 40-year-old award-winning artist to three years in prison late last year on account of her association with the banned spiritual movement. On November 25, 2008, the Beijing Chongwen District People's Court sentenced Xu Na to three years in prison for "using a cult organization to undermine the implementation of the law," according to Xu's attorney as reported by the Associated Press (AP) (reprinted in the International Herald Tribune), Agence France-Presse (AFP) (reprinted in Yahoo! News), and Radio Free Asia (RFA) on November 25.

Local governments in China reported in fall 2008 on measures to prevent "illegal" religious gatherings and curb other "illegal" religious activities, continuing longstanding controls over religious practice in China. As noted in Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) Annual Reports (see, for example, reports from 2007 and 2008), religious communities must apply to register with the government and must submit to state control over their affairs. Registered groups must receive government approval to establish sites of worship. Religious and spiritual groups that do not meet registration requirements and groups that choose not to submit to government control through registration risk harassment, detention, closure of sites of worship, and other abuses.

The state-controlled Chinese Protestant church marked the 10th-year anniversary of a program of theology that aligns Protestant doctrine to Communist Party policy, according to several November 2008 reports from the State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA). As noted in the Congressional-Executive Commission on China 2008 Annual Report (via the Government Printing Office Web site), the state-controlled Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM), which leads the registered Protestant church in China, suppresses denominational differences among Protestants and imposes a Communist Party-defined program of "theological construction" on registered churches. "Theological construction," according to one TSPM official, is intended to "weaken those aspects within Christian faith that do not conform with the socialist society."