ntinue cracking down on “illegal evangelism,” institutions in charge of cyberspace take control over the public opinion, state security units strengthen the collection of information about religious groups, and publicity departments intensify propaganda campaigns.

Even the cross-removal drives didn’t stop amid the spreading coronavirus. As per reports on Twitter, a cross was dismantled from a church in Woyang county of Anhui’s Bozhou city on March 13, and another one in the Huaishang district of Bengbu city.

According to the work plan for 2020, issued by the Ethnic and Religious Affairs Commission of Tianjin, one of the four China’s centrally governed municipalities, the control over religion will intensify throughout the year. The plan foresees further integration of socialist ideology with religion, suppression of “foreign religious infiltration,” and increasing oversight of state-approved religious venues.

On January 24, all places of worship in Shangqiu, a prefecture-level city in the central province of Henan, were shut down to curb the epidemic. Still, local governments continued inspecting people’s homes, removing religious couplets. Officials were warning residents through loudspeakers that their pensions would be suspended if such couplets were found in their homes.

On February 27, the Two National Christian Councils of Yuzhou, a county-level city in Henan, notified all churches that a provincial inspection team was visiting the area to check how the no-assembly measure was being implemented. Those who resumed services were threatened to lose their religious activity venue registration certificates, and clergy members would have their preaching permits revoked.

After the inspection team found some religious couplets and calendars in a local Three-Self church, its director was reprimanded and told to write a self-criticism statement. He was also ordered to collect all religious calendars from congregation members within three days.

“Religious persecution is not alleviated because of the epidemic,” a house church preacher told Bitter Winter. “The CCP regards religious groups as a threat to its regime. The more unstable its power is, the more frequently these groups are suppressed.”

On February 11, the twelfth national conference of China’s officially approved religious groups was organized through video. Representatives of the five authorized religions were encouraged to collect donations for the epidemic relief but were warned that “religions could not be promoted or evangelical activities allowed” in the process. The prevention of evangelism is one of the primary tasks assigned to Religious Affairs Bureaus across the country amid the epidemic.

According to the information released by the UFWD in Hubei Province’s Wuhan city on February 20, “people handing out face masks as part of missionary work” were discovered on February 5 in the city’s Hanyang district. Subsequently, the authorities “immediately assigned all sub-districts and communities to cooperate with the Public Security Bureau and local police stations to make arrests and curb any likelihood of recurrence.”

Such bans on religious groups during disaster relief efforts in China have a long-standing tradition. The CCP always tightens control over charitable activities carried out by believers, attempting to prohibit them from promoting their faith. No religious information or symbols are allowed to be included among disaster relief materials or charity items. Members of religious groups that are not approved by the state have been arrested for organizing charitable activities.

Beijing’s UN ambassador, Zhang Jun, met with nongovernmental organizations to discuss China’s work plan for its Security Council presidency this month. At the end of the session, the diplomat faced questions about Xinjiang.

One participant, an ethnic Uyghur representative from the group Justice for All, spoke of her own relatives in Xinjiang who are missing and may be in detention. She asked Zhang how the mass detention of Uyghurs can be justified on national security grounds. Human Rights Watch then asked if the Chinese government would grant unfettered access throughout Xinjiang to the UN high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet, after recently renewing its invitation for her to visit the region.

Zhang listened to the questions without interrupting, but his response provided no real answers.

He restated China’s claim that the mass detention of Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang was vital for the global fight against terrorism. Many governments, UN rights experts, and human rights groups have rejected this false narrative, evidently intended to deflect allegations of gross rights violations.

Zhang then said that reports by human rights organizations and journalists – which have revealed large-scale rights abuses and unprecedented levels of mass surveillance in Xinjiang – were based on “lies and rumors.” But he never answered the question about granting Bachelet unfettered access to Xinjiang. Full and unimpeded access to detention camps is key, considering previous visits by diplomats and journalists have been tightly controlled and stage-managed by the authorities.

Last year, British Ambassador Karen Pierce used a public statement at the UN’s New York headquarters, backed by some two dozen countries, to condemn China’s treatment of Turkic Muslims, urge the closure of detention centers, and appeal for Bachelet’s unrestricted access.

Given Beijing’s threats and intimidation to discourage governments from criticizing its actions in Xinjiang, the courage of those countries is laudable, and UN member states should continue to call out China’s claims that Xinjiang camps are necessary for “deradicalization.”

A critical mass of global voices may make Beijing finally realize it cannot persecute an entire ethnic group without serious consequences to its international standing.

Now, a leaked database exposes in extraordinary detail the main reasons for the detentions of Emer, his three sons, and hundreds of others in their neighborhood: Their religion and their family ties.

The database profiles the internment of 311 individuals with relatives abroad in Karakax County, and lists information on more than 2,000 of their relatives, neighbors and friends. Each entry includes the detainee’s name, address, national identity number, detention date and location, along with a dossier on their family, religious and community background, the reason for detention, and a decision on whether to release them.

Taken as a whole, the database offers the fullest view yet into how Chinese officials decided who to put into and let out of detention camps, as part of a crackdown that has locked away more than a million ethnic minorities, most of them Uyghur Muslims.

The database shows that the state focused on religion as a reason for detention — not just political extremism, as authorities claim, but ordinary activities such as praying or attending a mosque. It shows that people with detained relatives are themselves more likely to end up in a camp, criminalizing entire families like Emer’s in the process.

“It’s very clear that religious practice is being targeted,” said Darren Byler, a University of Colorado researcher studying Xinjiang. “They want to fragment society, to pull the families apart and make them much more vulnerable to retraining and reeducation.”

The Xinjiang regional government did not respond to faxes requesting comment. Asked whether Xinjiang is targeting religious people and their families, foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said “this kind of nonsense is not worth commenting on.”

The Chinese government has said in the past that the detention centers are for voluntary job training, and that it does not discriminate based on religion.

China has struggled for decades to control Xinjiang, where the native, predominantly Muslim Uyghur have long resented Beijing’s rule. After militants set off bombs at a train station in Xinjiang’s capital in 2014, President Xi Jinping launched a so-called “People’s War on Terror”, turning Xinjiang into a digital police state.

The leak of the database follows the release in November of a classified blueprint. Obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which includes the AP, the blueprint shows the camps are in fact forced ideological and behavioral re-education centers run in secret.

The database comes from sources in the Uyghur exile community, and does not spell out which government department issued it or for whom. The detainees listed come from Karakax County, a traditional settlement on the edge of Xinjiang’s Taklamakan desert where more than 97 percent of its roughly 650,000 residents are Uyghur. The list was corroborated through interviews with former Karakax residents, identity verification tools, and other lists and documents.

The database shows that cadres compile dossiers on detainees called the “three circles”, encompassing their relatives, community, and religious background.

The detainees and their families are then classified by rigid categories. Households are designated as “trustworthy” or “not trustworthy”. Families have “light” or “heavy” religious atmospheres, and the database keeps count of how many relatives of each detainee are locked in prison or sent to a “training center”.

Officials used these categories to determine how suspicious a person was – even if they hadn’t committed any crimes.

Reasons listed for internment include “minor religious infection,” “disturbs other persons by visiting them without reasons,” “relatives abroad,” or “thinking is hard to grasp.”

Former student Abdullah Muhammad described Emer as one of the most respected imams in the region. He fed the hungry, bought coal for the poor, and treated the sick with free medicine.

But though Emer gave Party-approved sermons, he refused to preach Communist propaganda, Muhammad said, eventually running into trouble with authorities. He was stripped of his position as an imam in 1997.

Though he stopped attending religious gatherings, in 2017 authorities detained Emer, now in his eighties, and sentenced him to prison. The database cites four charges in various entries: “stirring up terrorism”, acting as an unauthorized “wild” imam, following the strict Saudi Wahhabi sect and conducting illegal religious teachings.

Muhammad called the charges false. Emer stopped his preaching, practiced a moderate sect of Islam and never dreamed of hurting others, let alone stirring up “terrorism,” Muhammad said.

Emer’s three sons, too, were all thrown in camps for religious reasons, though they weren’t charged with crimes. It shows their relation to Emer and their religious background caused officials to believe they were too dangerous to let out.

“His family’s religious atmosphere is thick. We recommend he (Emer) continue training,” notes an entry for his youngest son, Emer Memtimin.

But it wasn’t just the religious who were detained. Pharmacist Tohti Himit was detained in a camp for having gone multiple times to one of 26 “key”, mostly Muslim countries, the database said. A former employee said Himit was secular, keeping his face well-shaved.

“He wasn’t very pious, he didn’t go to the mosque,” said Habibullah, who declined to give his first name out of fear of retribution against family still in China. “I was shocked by how absurd the reasons for detention were.”

The database says Himit had gone to a mosque three times in 2008, once to attend his grandfather’s funeral. In 2014 he had gone to another province to get a passport and go abroad.

That, the government concluded, showed Himit was “dangerous” and needed to “continue training.”

Emer is now under house arrest due to health issues, Muhammad has heard. It’s unclear where Emer’s sons are. Though deprived of his mosque and his right to teach, Emer had quietly defied the authorities for two decades by staying true to his faith.

“He never bowed down to them — and that’s why they wanted to eliminate him,” Muhammad said.

These are just some of the ways that the Chinese Communist Party is persecuting Christians in China.

But it’s not just Christians. In China’s Far West, over a million Muslims languish in concentration camps — Beijing cutely calls them “vocational training centers” — while mosques are being torn down, religious signs removed and ancient cemeteries leveled.

Elsewhere in China, Buddhist temples are being turned into shrines celebrating Xi Jinping, China’s President For Life. His picture adorns the walls, his recorded voice booms out of the loudspeakers, and it is his “Thought” — not Buddha’s — that the monks are now required to meditate upon.

Not even the Taoists, China’s ancient folk religion, have escaped this new Cultural Revolution. Temples that have stood for over 1,000 years have been closed and ancient statues smashed, all on the orders of “Religious Affairs” officials.

Perhaps some of those who are concerned about protecting cultural sites in Iran could spare a thought for the daily demolition derby now going on in China.

A demolition derby that is about to get worse, a lot worse.

On Feb. 1, 2020, new restrictions on all forms of religious activity came into force.

The “Control Measures for Religious Groups,” as the 41 new rules are called, deal with everything from the holding of rites and rituals, to the selection of leaders and annual meetings, to the hiring of staff and the handling of funds. All of these must be reported — in advance, no less — to the comrades at the “Religious Affairs” office for their approval.

In other words, without the permission of the authorities, you can’t organize a Bible study. And if you do get permission, you’d better hold it in a Party-approved religious venue, at a Party-approved time, with a Party-approved leader and using the new Party-approved Bible, which contains quotations from Confucius and, of course, Xi Jinping.

No Communist directive would be complete without a Catch-22 and the “Control Measures” contain a doozy: “Religious groups must also report to the appropriate government authorities any and all other matters that should be reported.”

Translation: We can shut you down at any time for any reason.

The “Control Measures” are part of Xi Jinping’s New Cultural Revolution, one goal of which is to stamp out all religious groups that the Communist Party cannot co-opt and control. “A religious group cannot carry out any activities,” warns the new rules, “without registration with the Civil Affairs office and the approval of the Religious Affairs office of the people’s government.”

Some religious groups will never be allowed to register, no matter how innocent their activities. The Early Rain Covenant Church and the Falun Gong have already been declared to be “heretical cults” and their followers will continue to suffer arrest, imprisonment and, in some cases, torture. The Early Rain pastor, for example, has just been sentenced to nine years in prison.

Members of other groups are being forced to join existing Party-controlled organizations. In the case of the bishops, priests and laity of the underground Catholic Church, for instance, this is the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, whose leaders are handpicked Party followers.

But, like Mao’s Cultural Revolution, Xi’s copycat version has an even more ambitious goal. It is to extinguish faith in God altogether, replacing it with faith in the Chinese Communist Party and the Party’s own “small-g” god of the moment, who is Xi Jinping himself.

And it perversely intends to enlist China’s churches, mosques, shrines and temples into this effort.

The new rules order all “religious groups” to “propagandize the principles and policies of the Chinese Communist Party, along with national laws and regulations, to all of their religious staff and followers” and to “educate and guide all religious staff and followers to embrace the Chinese Communist Party’s leadership, to embrace the socialist system, to uphold the path of ‘Socialism with Chinese Characteristics’ . . . and to maintain the overall policy of sinicization of religion.”

If all this sounds like the Party wants to use religious groups and leaders to promote the official ideology and strengthen its own hold on power, that’s because it does. Any group that refuses to be subverted by the Party in this way will be declared heretical, and their churches or temples will be shuttered or torn down. Pastors or priests who refuse to serve the Party in this way — as junior political commissars, as it were — will be sent home or, if they resist, to prison.

As far as the “overall policy of sinicization of religion” is concerned, we know exactly what this portends. It is a policy of replacing the worship of God with the worship of the Communist Party leadership. Hitler and the Nazis attempted something similar in the 1930s with their Nazification program, which was an effort to turn the Catholic and Protestant churches of Germany into ardent supporters of National Socialism and the Nazi leadership.

That is exactly what the Chinese Communist Party is trying to do today in China to every Christian church, Islamic mosque, Taoist shrine and Buddhist temple in China.

The end goal is to one day purge them from the Chinese cultural landscape altogether so that the Communist Party and its now deified leader, Xi Jinping, can reign supreme.

The China Tribunal, a group that’s investigating the organ harvesting, said at a tense meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council that the Chinese government was taking hearts, kidneys, lungs, and skin from groups including Uyghur Muslims and members of the Falun Gong religious group.

The China Tribunal describes itself as an “independent, international people’s tribunal, and was backed by the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China, an Australian human rights charity made up of lawyers, academics, and medical professionals.

China has denied carrying out mass harvesting of organs in any circumstance.

Addressing UN representatives, a lawyer for the China Tribunal, Hamid Sabi, said the group had proof of the organ harvesting.

Sabi said the group had found that China was committing “crimes against humanity” by harvesting organs from religious minorities like the Uyghurs and members of Falun Gong, which has been banned and widely persecuted by the Chinese government.

“Forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience, including the religious minorities of Falun Gong and Uyghurs, has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale,” Sabi said in a video published on the China Tribunal website.

Sabi was presenting evidence from the tribunal’s final report, published in June, which found that a “very substantial number” of prisoners were “killed to order” by the Chinese government.

They were “cut open while still alive for their kidneys, livers, hearts, lungs, cornea and skin to be removed and turned into commodities for sale,” the report said.

The body parts were then used for medical purposes, it said, citing extremely short wait times for organ transplants in Chinese hospitals as evidence of the practice.

The report was led by Sir Geoffrey Nice, a British lawyer who was the lead prosecutor in the trial of Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslavian president.

Sabi told the UN council on Tuesday that China’s efforts involved “hundreds of thousands of victims,” describing it as “one of the worst mass atrocities of this century.”

He did not specify how many organs the China Tribunal believes had been harvested, or the number taken from Uyghurs and from Falun Gong members.

“Victim for victim and death for death, cutting out the hearts and other organs from living, blameless, harmless, peaceable people constitutes one of the worst mass atrocities of this century,” he said.

“Organ transplantation to save life is a scientific and social triumph, but killing the donor is criminal.”

Reuters said China has insisted that it “stopped using organs from executed prisoners in 2015.”

The Chinese government did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment on Sabi’s testimony.

Sabi concluded by saying that it is the duty of international bodies like the UN to investigate the tribunal’s findings “not only in regard to the possible charge of genocide, but also in regard to crimes against humanity.”

The crosses are said to often be replaced with objects such as the Chinese flag and photos of Chinese President Xi Jinping and former Communist Party leader Mao Zedong.

In one video posted on Twitter earlier this month, fire is seen engulfing the cross at the Chinese Christian Church in Xinxiang city, in the country’s central Henan province.

Liang Zhang, 48, the pastor of a house church in Henan’s Shangqiu city, said the state had been tightening its control over church operations.

“In the beginning, they said that children would not be allowed to enter, and signs on the outside should be removed, including the cross and other signs of faith,” Mr Zhang told the ABC.

“And then they came into the church saying that things inside should be removed.

“For example, the banner saying: ‘For God, so love the world’ and the scriptures were torn down, and all things related to the Bible and faith had to be cleared out.”

China’s campaign to ‘Sinicise’ religion

Several videos sent by Mr Zhang to the ABC, and others circulating on social media, appear to show the forced destruction of crosses and changes to churches’ appearances.

In some videos, which Mr Zhang said were filmed recently in Henan, authorities use cranes to take down crosses, while others show officials forcing their way into underground churches.

The campaign corresponds with the Government drive to “Sinicise” religion by demanding loyalty to the officially atheist Communist Party and eliminating any challenge to its power over people’s lives.

Mr Zhang said the clampdown had become more dramatic in recent months, with even state-sanctioned churches targeted.

“Since June, they started to ask us to tear down things about Sunday School for kids,” Mr Zhang said.

“[Many] of the big official TSPM churches and the family churches were closed down,” he added, referring to the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, a state-sanctioned church.

Mr Zhang said the Government was installing “information officers”, who report behaviour that is anti-government or seen as a threat to social stability, in churches.

He said the only places where the Bible could be discussed freely were small church setups in houses, where 20-30 people could gather.

Under Chinese law, religious followers are only allowed to worship in congregations registered with authorities, but many millions belong to so-called underground or house churches that defy government restrictions.

Mr Zhang said dozens of churches had been shut down in his county and those remaining were beginning to “look like culture clubs” rather than religious buildings.

“All of the … religious facilities inside the church have been removed [and] the national flag will have to be hung at the gate before October 1st,” he said.

“We now have our cross in the middle of our presidents’ portraits, which are President Xi and Chairman Mao’s portraits.”

The latest tightening of control follows moves earlier this year to pull bibles from sale through online bookstores across China, sparking outrage from Chinese Christians.

Crackdown comes as Vatican reaches deal with China

The crackdown on religion was continuing even as Beijing was negotiating a landmark deal with the Vatican over the appointment of bishops.

On Saturday, the Vatican signed an agreement giving it a long-desired and decisive say in the appointment of bishops in China, though critics labelled it a sell-out to the Chinese Government.

The deal resolved one of the major sticking points between China and the Vatican in recent years, with the Vatican agreeing to accept seven bishops who were previously named by Beijing without the Pope’s consent.

The Vatican has said the accord, a breakthrough after years of negotiations, was “not political but pastoral”, and hoped it would lead to “the full communion of all Chinese Catholics”.

Bob Fu, the founder of Christian human rights organisation ChinaAid, was among those to hit out at the agreement.

“While we understand the eagerness of Vatican for seeking more legitimacy in the eye of the Chinese Communist Party, this reported deal is nothing but a betrayal of both the millions of suffering persecuted Christians in China and the global Catholic Church,” he said.

Joseph Zen, a Chinese cardinal of the Catholic Church in Hong Kong, said the deal lacked detail and helped empower the Government.

“With the agreement the [Chinese] Government can tell the Catholics: ‘Obey to us! We are in agreement with your Pope!'”