Chinese Christians are reportedly facing the "most serious crackdown since the cultural revolution" according to a 818-page report released on Tuesday by Aid To The Church In Need, a Catholic organization that helps war refugees and serves oppressed Christians around the world.
Breitbart revealed that the Aid To The Church In Need (ACN) report showed authorities in China have "intensified" its crackdown on religious minorities.
Breitbart quoted ACN in saying that Xi Jinping's leadership makes it "ever-more bleak" for religious freedom that they project will continue and become "more intrusive and pervasive." ACN's report showed that religious suppression in China has intensified more than ever.
"Under the current leadership of Xi Jinping, the prospects for religious freedom--and human rights more broadly--are becoming ever-more bleak. With no meaningful political liberalisation in sight, repression and persecution will continue and, with the tools of modern technology, become even more intrusive and pervasive. Freedom of religion in China is currently subjected to the most serious crackdown since the Cultural Revolution," ACN said.
ACN's report is entitled, "Religious Freedom In The World Report 2021." In the Regional Analysis Section of its report for Mainland Asia, ACN stressed that China has " dubious distinction of having fine-tuned one of the most pervasive and effective state-run engines of religious control currently in operation anywhere in the world."
ACN cited the latest Pew Research Center "report on global religious restrictions" that was released in November 2020. The said report said that "China scores 9.3 out of a possible 10 on Pew's Government Restrictions Index (GRI)," which happens to be "the highest score in the study."
"Combining mass surveillance, a social credit system that scrutinizes and sanctions individual behaviour (sic), and brutal crackdowns on religious and ethnic groups suspected of disloyalty, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is in a class of its own when it comes to the suffocation of religious freedom," ACN quoted of the Pew Research Center report.
"Furthermore, as revealed in the China country report, it has become only more brutal since Xi Jinping became China's president in 2013, as demonstrated by the mass internment of more than a million primarily Muslim ethnic Uyghurs in Xinjiang Province and their subjection to coercive "de-radicalization" programs since 2017," ACN stressed.
Breitbart highlighted from the ACN report the incarceration of 900,000 to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups that were held in more than 1,300 concentration camps across China. This is on top of the arrest of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners in 2019 and the manipulation of the Catholic Church there.
The Main Findings of the ACN report classified China to belong in the Red Category where religious persecution was high. China is joined by Myanmar and 12 African countries in the said category, which is estimated to encompass 3.9 billion people or 51% of the world's population.
There are four more classifications such s the Orange category, the "under observation" classification, countries where hate crimes occur, and the rest remains unclassified. There are said to be 36 countries under the Orange category that involves 1.24 billion people. Overall, 31.6% of the world's countries experience violations in religious freedom encompassing 62 countries or 5.2 billion people.
