United States: Report by the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China Cites Intensified Repression of Freedom of Belief

On October 5th, 2004, Chairman Jim Leach (R-IA) and Co-Chairman Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and other members of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) presented the CECC Annual Report for 2004 in the Rayburn House Office Building, Washington DC. The CECC was created by Congress in October 2000 with the legislative mandate to monitor human rights and the development of the rule of law in China, and to submit an annual report to the US President and the Congress. It consists of nine Senators, nine members of the House of Representatives, and five senior Administration officials appointed by the President.

The report stated that the Commission finds severe and continuing problems on many of the issues critical to ensuring that its citizens enjoy internationally recognised human rights.

During the press conference coinciding with the report's launch, commission chairman Jim Leach expressed particular concern over Beijing's "crackdown" on the free practise of religion in the mainland. According to the bi-partisan CECC, the Chinese government's repression of free religious belief and practise has grown more severe over the past year.

The report notes that the Chinese government continues to detain and imprison Chinese citizens for peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of expression, association, and belief. Coerced confessions, lack of access to defence counsel, law enforcement manipulation of procedural protections, pervasive presumption of guilt by law enforcement officials, judges, and the public, and extra-judicial pressures on courts continue to undermine the fairness of the criminal process in China.

According to the report, the Party intensified its crackdown against free religious belief and practise during 2003 and expanded the campaign during 2004. The Commission has welcomed China's progress toward developing a system based on the rule of law, but in the case of religion, the Chinese government uses law as a weapon against believers. Hundreds of unregistered believers, and members of spiritual groups such as Falun Gong, have endured severe government repression in the past year.

The report states, "The freedom to believe and to practise one's religious faith is a universal and essential right. The Chinese leadership must open itself to dialogue on establishing true freedom of religion for all its citizens." The CECC also urges the President and the Congress to foster and support such a dialogue by urging Chinese leaders at all levels to meet with religious figures from around the world to discuss the positive impact on national development of free religious belief and religious tolerance, and to urge the release of religious prisoners.

The Commission also suggests that the President and the Congress continue to urge China's leaders to eliminate all laws and regulations that allow the arbitrary labelling of unregistered religious and spiritual groups as cults, and to eliminate all restrictions and controls on the freedom to produce, read, and distribute the religious or spiritual texts of one's choosing.