2012-07-30
The US State Department hits out at China for its policies on
Tibetan Buddhists and Uyghur Muslims in an annual report on global
religious freedom.
AFP
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
speaks at the Carnegie Foundation in Washington after the release of the
State Department's 2011 International Religious Freedom Report, July
30, 2012.
China has suffered a sharp decline in religious freedom while
Burma has made little progress on the issue despite democratic reforms,
the U.S. State Department said in an annual report to American
lawmakers.
It said that abuse of religious freedom remained a
concern in Vietnam, including cases involving arrests, detentions, and
convictions of religious practitioners.
The State Department’s
2011 Religious Freedom Report that reviewed the situation across the
globe last year slammed China, saying there was a “marked deterioration”
in Beijing’s respect for and protection of religious rights in the
world’s most populous nation.
It cited increased restrictions on
Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns and clampdowns on religious practices
ahead of sensitive anniversaries, as well as “severe” repression of
Muslim Uyghurs in the volatile Xinjiang region.
Burma, which
ushered in a new, nominally civilian government in 2011, “took steps”
during the year toward overcoming its legacy of “intense religious
oppression,” but continued to impose restrictions and monitor meetings
by religious organizations, it said.
In Vietnam, authorities
held religious prisoners, refused to allow churches to register, and
harassed believers, the report said, amid calls by rights groups to
President Barack Obama’s administration to re-designate the country as a
“Country of Particular Concern”—a label that the U.S. government gives
to countries for ongoing, egregious violations of religious freedom.
At
a briefing on the release of the report, Ambassador-at-Large for
International Religious freedom Suzan Johnson Cook said that freedom of
religion went “hand in hand” with freedoms of expression, speech, and
assembly, and that governments in Asia and around the world had
“misused” laws to restrict freedom of all three.
“Religious
freedom is often the bellwether for other human rights,” including
freedom of expression, speech, and assembly, she said.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the "global picture" for
religious freedom, with over a billion people worldwide living under
governments that "systematically" repress people's beliefs, was
"sobering."
"When it comes to this human right, this key feature of stable,
secure, peaceful societies, the world is sliding backwards," she said,
speaking at the Carnegie Center for International Peace after the
report's release.
China
Chinese authorities’ restrictions on religious practices among Tibetans and Uyghurs were “severe,” the report said.
The
State Department placed blame on authorities for stoking tensions that
led to the recent wave of Tibetans setting themselves on fire in protest
against Chinese rule.
"Official interference in the practice
of these religious traditions exacerbated grievances and contributed to
at least 12 self-immolations by Tibetans in 2011," the report said.
Further
self-immolations this year—which brought the current total to 44 since
2009—continue to demonstrate Tibetans’ “desperation” under China’s rule,
Johnson Cook said.
In China’s far northwestern Xinjiang
region, home to the mostly Muslim Uyghur group, religious restrictions
were closely tied to political repression, the report said.
The
government’s concern over “separatism, religious extremism, and
terrorism” had contributed to restrictions on Muslims, with authorities
“failing to distinguish between peaceful religious practice and criminal
or terrorist activities,” it said.
Outside of Tibet and
Xinjiang, Chinese officials restricted the activities of both registered
and unregistered groups, including members of underground Christian
“house churches” and members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement, the
report said.
Some Falun Gong adherents had reportedly been held in
ankang psychiatric institutions, while authorities had raided house churches and confiscated Bibles, it said.
Individuals
had been harassed or detained for assembling for worship, expressing
their beliefs in public and private, and publishing religious texts, it
added.
The U.S. had raised issues concerning house churches, Falun Gong,
Uyghur Muslims, and Tibetan Buddhists, during talks at the U.S.-China
Human Rights Dialogue in Washington last week, Johnson Cook said.
“That’s a continuing conversation and we will not let up,” she said.
Burma
The report slammed the Burmese government for marginalizing the
Muslim Rohingya, a minority which has been at the center of deadly
communal violence in western Burma’s Rakhine state since June of this
year.
“The government continued to refuse to recognize the Muslim
Rohingya ethnic minority as citizens and imposed restrictions on their
movement and marriage,” it said.
At the same time, it praised
Burma for the “limited” steps it took toward greater religious freedom
during 2011, when a new government took power in the country after
decades of rule under the former military junta.
Burma had
eased some restrictions on building churches and had generally permitted
followers of registered religious groups to worship as they chose, the
report said.
But it had also “frequently limited religious freedom” and continued to impose restrictions on certain religious activities.
Some
Buddhist monks arrested during the 2007 “Saffron Revolution” protest
movement led by monasteries had been released, it said, but noted others
remained in prison serving long sentences.
VietnamIn
Vietnam, government practices and “bureaucratic impediments” had
restricted religious freedom in 2011, while reports of rights abuses
remained at levels consistent to the year before, the State Department
said.
Christians had faced particular challenges in the country,
the report said, noting an incident of detainees being treated harshly
after a protest over the closing of a cemetery in Con Dau parish.
Authorities
had harassed individuals for their religious beliefs and some religious
groups for their political activism, it added.
But it praised
authorities for allowing new religious groups to register and for
pursuing talks with the Vatican concerning the country’s Catholic
community.
LaosThe State Department praised Laos
for a “slight trend” toward improvement in protection of religious
rights through public education outreach in the provinces.
But it
slammed local and district-level authorities for being lax in their
enforcement of laws and policies protecting religious freedom.
Local
authorities sometimes demonstrated suspicion of non-Buddhist
communities and showed intolerance for minority groups, particularly
Protestant Christians, it said.
CambodiaCambodia
was one of the few Southeast Asian nations to stand out for relative
tolerance of religious rights in 2011, the report said.
The State
Department said there were no reports of abuses of religious freedom
and few reports of societal abuses or discrimination based on religion
last year.
“The constitution and other laws and policies protect
religious freedom and, in practice, the government generally respected
religious freedom,” it said.
North KoreaReligious freedom “simply does not exist” in isolated North Korea, the report said.
“Government
policy continued to interfere with individuals’ ability to choose and
to manifest their religious beliefs,” the report said.
Though
little is known about the isolated country, some reports from refugees
and defectors and missionaries indicated that North Koreans who had
contact with foreigners or missionaries were subjected to harsh
penalties, it said.
