Emma Park, (EP): You're listening to the National Secular Society podcast hosted by Emma Park.
On the 1st of July this year the Chinese
government pushed through a new security
law in Hong Kong
to greatly restrict citizens rights to
basic freedoms such as freedom of speech.
If you've been following events in China
in recent years, this most recent
crackdown on civil liberties by a very
authoritarian regime,
will not have come as a surprise. It
follows on from stories of the mass
internment of Uighur muslims in western
China,
of the persecution of followers of the
Dalai Lama in Tibet
and of the massive surveillance
technology which the Chinese government
is using on its own citizens throughout
the country.
Those who want to follow their religion or
belief independently of state
interference continue to be at risk of
persecution
and the Chinese government is doing its
best to influence the narrative outside
its borders as well.
But what is actually happening to
religious minorities in China?
What is the outlook for religious
freedom there in the future?
I'm joined now from Washington D.C. by Dr.
Sophie Richardson. Sophie Richardson is
China Director at Human Rights Watch - an
international non-profit organization
that investigates
and reports on human rights abuses
around the world. Sophie, the Hong Kong
national security law has just come into
force. I imagine this is keeping you
quite occupied at the moment.
Dr Sophie Richardson,  (SR): Yes, it's an extraordinary law in that it seems boundless
both in the behavior it criminalizes
but also the people
to whom it applies - it seems to actually
have been written to apply even to
people outside
Hong Kong and it really gives the
authorities
the opportunity to punish all sorts of
peaceful criticism
or even behavior that's not meant to
criticize the Hong Kong or the central
government.
If you take the law at face value and
uh, you know, the language that
essentially suggests
that any sort of criticism can be
construed or deemed as subversive
or indicative of secessionist or
terroristic
impulses, you know, the wording really is
incredibly vague -
you know, that could include, uh,
you know, practicing one's faith and I
think some of the people who
may be targeted under this new law,
you know, are people like Cardinal Zen or
other figures from different faith
communities who have been critical
both of the Hong Kong and central
government authorities.
Uh, you know, the, the goal of this law
in Beijing's mind is to make everyone
stop and think twice
about any kind of behavior and wonder
whether it could be construed as
illegal and that will extend, you know, to
everything
from choosing to run for office,
to choosing to, uh, go to a protest
and presumably choosing to practice your
faith.
(EP): So, so is the idea behind the national
security law that its terms are
sufficiently vague that
it it just sort of induces an air of
paranoia so people......
just a general repression of people's
way they think and the way they act?
(SR): Precisely and in,
you know, in the 48 hours before the law
went into effect it probably bears
mention
that people were not able to see the
text of the law
until it was going into effect uh, but in
the 48 hours prior to that,
you know, we were watching all kinds of
activists deleting all of their social
media accounts,
withdrawing from political parties,
announcing
that they had changed their mind about
whether to run for office
precisely because it's not clear that
those behaviors
won't be prosecuted under the new law.
(EP): Wow.
So, well, let's turn to um the Chinese
Communist Party
um and, and mainland China and what's
been going on there because of course
that's the source of
this um new direction in Hong Kong. Under
the Chinese constitution,
is there at least on paper a right to
freedom of religion and belief?
(SR): On paper, you are allowed
'normal' religious activities and of
course
a great deal depends on what constitutes
'normal'
and historically the authorities have
been reasonably tolerant
of people who are worshiping in
state-sanctioned
churches or communities but anything
outside of those is subject to
prosecution and even people who do
worship within
those state communities have not always
been protected
by that status. So
it, again it's, you know, it's just another
example of how the authorities
reserve, you know, this incredibly
arbitrary power
to shut down essentially whoever they
don't like, whenever they don't like
but one of the very disturbing
pathologies under president Xi Jinping
has
been a push to 'cynacise' religion
which, you know, essentially means making
religion more of a tool for the Chinese
Communist Party
rather than truly respecting
people's rights to believe. The
Chinese Communist party has no
respect for the idea that, that religious
freedom
and the freedom of belief are
individually held - they're, they're for
people to have
or not have, not for a government to give
or take away.
(EP): What is it that under the Chinese
Communist party..... Why does it feel so
threatened by religions?
(SR): Well I think because the party sees
religion
as not just an alternative ideology
but it's far more concerned about
religion as an alternative
organizing vehicle uh, and
it is, it is incredibly neuralgic about
that
and I mean it's worth pointing out that
it's incredibly neuralgic about
independent civil society groups
or, you know, people whose ethnic
identities
result in as much of a sense of
commonality with for example communities
in Central Asia as
an identity as a citizen of the P.R.C.
uh, but I think, you know, historically
religion in particular
and, and uh, you know, a sense
of, of adherence to a different set of
principles and
particularly for faiths whose
leaderships are in different parts of
the world,
the idea that people inside China are,
have a higher loyalty,
for example, to the Vatican, is not
something Beijing likes.
(EP): Sure, and well, let's move to the most
striking example of
Chinese suspicion of religion at the
moment which is it's treatment of,
the CCP's treatment of, the Uighurs in
Xinjiang, which is of course in
the far western part of China in, in
Central Asia.
Um, now of course the Uighurs  are
distinct historically in terms of their
culture, religion and ethnicity from the
Han Chinese majority. How did it come up
about that they
are part of China in the first place?
(SR): Well essentially,
you know, the P.R.C. says it had
a claim to that particular piece of
territory and it was absorbed into the
People's Republic
uh, in 1949. I think what
many people or I should say it this way, you
know, some people do advocate
independence - I think what many people
would
accept or find acceptable uh,
would be the kind of genuine autonomy
that
Xinjiang and Tibet and Hong Kong
are meant to enjoy. (EP): Has, has Xinjiang ever
enjoyed this autonomy, I mean,
have the restrictions on it become
recent or have they been going on since
1949?
(SR): You're absolutely correct that Xinjiang
has never really enjoyed
autonomy in any meaningful sense uh,
and in the last several years we have
watched the authorities,
you know, not just deny,
you know, any degree of independent
representation for example
or the ability of local authorities to
make decisions
as they see fit but in fact we've
watched the state
really launch a wholesale assault on
Uighur's distinct
identity. (EP): So what are the main ways that
it's doing that?
(SR): You know, what we've documented in recent
years mostly
through mass arbitrary detention of
Uighurs is,
you know, clearly an effort to reprogram
people to force them to abolish their
religious faith,
to force them to speak Chinese
instead of Uighur, to force them to
swear their loyalty to the central
government and the party
uh, you know, it's, it's not an accident
that central government officials will
now refer, for example, to the practice of
Islam
as a mental illness. (EP): Oh my gosh, that,
that's really extreme.
(SR): Yeah. (EP): ...and then that is officially what,
what they're going to say
about Islam? (SR): Yeah, that, that to be
uh, I mean, you see it regularly that,
that, you know, to practice Islam is a
form of extremism,
uh, that it's often conflated with
terrorism or separatism -
there's, there seems to be a particular
hostility on the party's part
towards Uighurs . (EP): And, and how many of the Uighurs
are likely to be interned at the moment?
(SR): Well, I mean this is the moment when,
you know, an independent international
investigation ideally under the auspices
of the United Nations should be able to
visit the region
and assess that.  We have associated
ourselves with the figure
of approximately a million uh, Uighurs
and other Turkic muslims detained in
political education centers since
roughly 2017.
More recent information suggests that
some of those people - we don't really
know how many, have
either been shifted into formal prisons
because of course the political
education centers are not
constituted by any Chinese law.
 (EP): So they're not um, they're not
const, within the, within
Chinese um constitution, they're not
technically lawful or is there some sort
of exception that
would allow them? (SR): No. They're making it up - 
there's no legal basis
under domestic or international law for
Chinese authorities to arbitrarily
detain
or to detain people in this way. Even
Chinese law dictates that you have to go
through some kind of
legal process, that you're meant to be
presented, you know, with,
with, you know, charges that are clearly
constituted and that's obviously not
what's happening in Xinjiang
but it also seems to be the case that
some people  - again,
it's hard to tell how many - have been
quasi-released either into forms
of forced or coerced labor or into some
kind of long-term house arrest but
nobody should confuse any of this with
people actually being free,
let alone to worship. (EP): In the forced labor
camps, there have been reports
that they've been using the, the Uighurs
to
make things that have gone into the
international supply chain and been used
by
international companies. Is there any
evidence for that?
(SR): Well, I think what we know for sure is
that companies themselves
are not able to do the kind of
due diligence to
be confident they aren't using forced
or coerced labor uh, in their business
dealings
in Xinjiang and I think that's an issue
for governments
and for shareholders and consumers to
think long and hard about.
(EP): Do we know any stories of particular
atrocities that are happening within the
um
political education centers, as they're
called? (SR): Yes, we've documented
uh, you know, physical torture and ill
treatment, beatings
uh, uh and sort of that, that realm of
abuses.
I think it is fair to say that anyone
detained in a political education center
is being subjected to psychiatric
torture
because people have no way of knowing
how long they're going to be held there -
relatively few of them even
know what it was
that landed them there in the first
place
uh, you know and.... (EP): They're not told
presumably why they're there?
(SR): Correct. Correct, you know, and, and many of
them
are, as far as we can tell, being
subjected to
constant humiliation over their faith,
their identity, their language -
many of them are separated from family
members -
some of I think the most chilling abuses
we've documented in the region
as a result of the campaign that drove
the establishment of the political
education centers is what's happening to
children whose parents have been
detained.
(EP): Right, what's happened.... so what is
happening to them? (SR):  We've documented a number of children who were essentially
placed in state care where they too
are being denied any access
to the faiths that their families were
raising them in,
to speak Uighur and they're being taught
in Chinese
uh, it's, some parents have told us they
literally don't know where their
children are.
(EP): Right, so the children have totally been
cut off from their parents?
(SR): Not just from their parents but really
from their cultures, their communities
and I think we should all be concerned
longer term about whether this
essentially results
in, you know, the compulsory cynicisation,
for lack of a better term,
of these children. (EP): I mean presumably
that's not just becoming Chinese in any
particular way, it's becoming Chinese
according to a particular
um, idea of what Chinese means. (SR): Precisely
and it's the party's idea of what that
means -
you know, being loyal to the party that
means speaking Chinese, that means,
you know, not you're not worshiping
outside of the state churches,
tick on down the list. There's a very
specific meaning
of that term. (EP):  Yeah and what is the
Chinese government's,
as far as, um, you can gather, what, what
appears to be um, it's long-term
plan for the Uighurs? (SR): Well, I think it's
long-term plan
for not just the Uighurs but for
everyone across the country is to,
you know, either program or surveille
people into total obedience -
you know, really to generate a dissent
free society
it's, it's a very peculiar phenomenon
what's happening with
ethnic minorities most notably Tibetans
and Uighurs and other Turkic muslims
that
you know, the idea almost seems to be
that, that
those people will be allowed to exist as, as
sort of a distinct ethnicity
but all of the substance of
that distinct identity will be hollowed
out
and replaced with that which the Chinese
Communist Party finds acceptable. So it's
okay to be
a Tibetan so long as you're not a
Buddhist
and that you are not loyal to the Dalai
Lama, that you speak Chinese and that you're,
you know, supportive of the party.
(EP): So actually yeah, let's let's turn to
Tibet, I mean is, is the situation they're
similar to um
the Uighurs in Xinjiang is it, um.... How
have the Tibetan Buddhists been treated
by the Chinese Communist party in recent
years? (SR): Yeah, I think that the authorities
have treated Tibetans
in, a bit differently in that they don't
seem to see or sense a similar
set of concerns about terrorism or
violence with Tibetans. The concern seems
to be
about ongoing adherence not just to
Buddhism but to the Dalai Lama in
particular
and it's extraordinary when you look at
the effort the state has made,
the money, the time, the resources that
have gone into trying to
force people into worshiping only the
ways that the party finds acceptable and
this comes up
particularly around issues about the
Dalai Lama's succession.
(EP): In, within Tibet, how far, I mean, if the
Tibetans are not accepting
um, the Chinese government's alternative
candidate and presumably this is causing
tensions between the Tibetans and the
the Chinese authorities?
(SR): For sure and it's not just tension it is
increasingly harsh
punishments for people who,
you know, let that lack of loyalty show.
(EP): Such as what? What sort of punishments
have there been?
(SR): Oh, people getting sentences of 10, 12, 15
years
on ridiculous charges like quote
"stirring up
troubles" - essentially for having a
photograph of the Dalai Lama in their
homes
or having um, you know, some information
about him or you know, other people from,
from, that faith community found on their
phones for example.
(EP): So it's, it's really quite um, pervasive
and intrusive to people's
life, lives... (SR): But it's not just that -  the, the
extent
of the Chinese government's tentacles
into monasteries and nunneries,
into aspects of religious education are
really
pervasive. (EP): Do they have um, sort of
their own candidates within these, these
monasteries?
(SR): Oh absolutely I mean all, all uh, imams
and lamas and across, you know, all
different faiths,
achieving that status requires the
authorities' permission. (EP):  Sure so they're,
they're effectively they do what the, the
authorities want them to do. (SR): But they're
also - it's worth pointing out - they're
also um, party appointed or government
appointed
individuals who are now installed
in monasteries ostensibly for the
purposes
of quote-unquote "management" but they,
they're there
for surveillance purposes. (EP): I mean, of
course - Tibet and Xinjiang -
they're quite remote areas compared with
um
the, the majority of the Chinese
population here in Central and Eastern
China
but what's happening in, in that part of
China in the
center and the east? Is there an equal
amount of persecution of religious
minorities um, and
is it equally blatant or is it more
covert?
(SR): It plays out differently for especially
in, in
communities of what are known as house
churches um
you know which, which are uh, you know,
Christian denominations
that don't want to worship inside
the state institutions, which is
understandable. Those communities are
often
subject to things like raids, of
arbitrary detention but members of that,
of those communities have also gotten
harsh sentences
on serious charges. (EP):  Do you have any
specific examples
of, of what's been happening to the
Christians, of particular stories of,
of Christians suffering persecution from
the authorities?
(SR): Sure, just in the past year or two the
case of the Early Rain
church which is uh one of these
underground house churches and that has
proved very
uh - popular isn't quite the right word - 
but it's gained a lot of adherence
partly because
uh they're very involved in providing
certain kinds of services or support and
sort of what you and I might think of as
pastoral care to
other people in the community and that
really
got the authorities' backs up - the idea
that,
that these people weren't just
congregating for the purpose of
worshipping
but also to provide help to other people
in the community. You would think that
authorities would like that. No. (EP): They
don't really like
um civil society in general
is the impression... (SR): Precisely. Precisely
uh, and so the pastor of that community
was prosecuted and given
uh, I think an 11-year sentence uh,
and I'm now not recalling precisely what
the charges were.
(EP) And what about the Falun Gong group
because they've been in
the news a lot over the last couple of
decades or so as being sort of......
The chinese government seems to claim
that they're terrorists. Is there any
basis to that?
(SR): No. I mean this is.... the Chinese government
also refers to the Dalai Lama
as a terrorist and but yeah, the, the
Chinese authorities I think have a
particular hostility
towards Falun Gong practitioners across
China after
they had organized and demonstrated very
visibly, to the authority's surprise,
uh years ago and since that time the
community has really been
largely driven underground and it can be
very hard to get information
about particular cases but I see no
reason to believe why those
people might be treated any better now
than they were in the past. Rather, I
think what we've seen
is, you know, comparable, comparable
hostility or suspicion of
other uh religious or spiritual
communities
fan out across the country. (EP):   Um,
just you mentioned um that in Xinjiang
for example Uighurs
required to swear an oath of loyalty to
the party and
um, thinking of the numerous monuments to
Mao Zedong around China
um, such as this enormous mausoleum in
Tiananmen square,
do you think citizens are being
encouraged by um, the Chinese authorities
to treat
Mao worship as a sort of substitute
religion? (SR): That's a great question!
uh, and we could also debate whether
they're substituting Xi Jinping worship
from.... (EP): Sure, I was going to ask that as well, yeah.
(SR): Um, well, I mean, look - clearly
swearing loyalty to the party is uh, is a
a favorite tool you know, so there,
there are clear campaigns going on
all the time across the country and I
think that has to be considered
alongside very aggressive
steps by authorities in parts of the
country like Tibet and Xinjiang to
destroy
cultural property - the Larung Gar Buddhist
community
uh, you know, the, the numbers of
mosques and shrines and even cemeteries
in
Xinjiang that have been torn down
or paved over is appalling, you know, it's
not just the loss
of, you know, the, the,
you know, the history and the
faith
but also it's such an aggressive gesture
of repudiating whole communities and
destroying
you know sacred spaces - I think that's a
very clear marker of,
of what a government is all about. (EP): Sure
so it's literally just
eliminating their whole identity in a
way. (SR): Exactly.
(EP): But, but what about, if we think of,
you know, the
place of Mao in Chinese society today, do
you think he's, he's viewed by people
um, as a sort of almost like a god?
(SR): I honestly don't know, you know,
it's always hard to answer a question on
behalf of 1.4 billion people (EP): Well of
course, of course, yes.
(SR):....and it's even harder to do when, you know,
it's,
it's incredibly hard to know, you know,
people's true feelings
given the state of surveillance um, but
if implicitly your question is does the
party
push people to worship
who it says they should worship?
Absolutely.
Do people buy it? I think that's, that's
an open question.
(EP): Is there any hope for, for freedom of
thought in China in the long term do you
think? And if so, where is it going to
come from?
(SR): Well I think, I think, you know,
the persistence of people who do
find ways of maintaining their faith
or their belief in ideas the party
doesn't believe in.
I think, I think humans are, are quite
resilient especially about,
you know, their, their most core values
and beliefs. (EP): I guess it's different,
difficult when you have children who are
being
educated within the state system who may
not remember or
share all of their parents views. (SR): For
sure.
You know, whether people succeed in
transmitting those to their children,
you know, is an open question. I think
this is precisely the frustration
in Tibet, you know, that, that for
decades
the authorities have worked so hard to
wipe out these beliefs
and, and meaning adherence to Buddhism
and yet that faith is quite resilient.
I think that, I think the authorities
don't quite know what to do
about that. (EP): Well what about in terms of
the international community?
Do you think that the international
community can have a positive
effect on um, the
suppression of freedoms in China?
(SR): I think uh, - so it's a very broad
statement - but I think
the uh the governments that claim to
care
about human rights radically
underestimated for somewhere between 10
and 15 years
the direction of the Chinese Communist
party intended to go
in and so the current reality really is
a very powerful Chinese government that
is uh, you know very engaged
in international institutions and
economies all over the world
and the group of governments that are
watching, for example ,
developments in Xinjiang and Hong Kong
unfold and they are
speaking up at forums like the U.N. Human
Rights council,
it's not yet clear though that they are
willing to take the kinds of steps
that might actually change the Chinese
government's calculations.
(EP): What sort of steps might those be? (SR): Right.
Are those governments actually going to
come together and impose sanctions on
senior Chinese leaders in response to
serious human rights violations? Are they
going to,
you know, either impose visa bans on
those people
or, you know, provide safe haven for
example to people from Hong Kong? Are
they,
are they,  actually going to try to
hold
senior Chinese government officials
accountable
through U.N. mechanisms the same way that
you would hold
accountable people from other
governments like,
you know, the, the Myanmar military or
you know other rights abusing regimes
held accountable
for their human rights violations? (EP): Sophie Richardson, you've given us a lot to
think about. Thank you very much.
(SR): Thank you.
(EP): I'm now joined by Alastair Lichten,
Head of Education at the NSS
for his expert comment on Dr Sophie
Richardson's
interview. Alastair, hello. Alastair Lichten, (AL): Hi (EP):  Do you think that China's treatment of
religion can in any sense be called
secularist?
because it's certainly not religious.
(AL): This is an issue that we've
covered and spoken out about but the
information has been limited.
It is clearly one of the most
wide-ranging
and horrific crimes against humanity
happening today
and critics of, critics of secularism
might
want, wish to lay that at secularists'
door as it were, so I think there are two
ways of answering
whether the, the specific, specific
situation or China's treatment of
religion in general is secularist. The
first
could be just quite a simple thing to
say -  it's clearly not secularism, in
fact it's the opposite of secularism but by,
almost by definition when you have
state regulating religion, when you have
state
mandating how people should practice
their religious beliefs
and outlawing religious or outlawing
and persecuting particular religious,
religious identities.
You could also argue that what China, how
china are treating a religion is a model of
secularism
however if you were to buy that argument
you would have to say
that it's such an illiberal model of
secularism
that it is just completely outside
of what we are talking about, it's
completely outside the realm of
liberal secularism, it's so far in that
dire
direction it's kind of like um, calling a
penguin a dinosaur.
Under some definitions, you could make
that technical argument but it's just
completely outside of the realm of
liberal secularism.
(EP): Absolutely and I mean, I think, one of the
key things about
secularism as far as I'm concerned is
the fact that it supports pluralism
and it very much fosters freedom of
religion and belief as well as freedom
of expression as far as possible and
within
what is necessary in a democratic
society whereas
China on the contrary as Dr Richardson
said,
certainly doesn't do that. It does not
allow any freedom of expression really
um,
in religious matters except to the very
very limited extent
in which the state really has total
control um, over
over people's beliefs. (AL): And in that, in
that sense it's
structurally and in terms of effect
very similar to a the, to a theocracy -
theocracies impo, mandate and impose
their own
their own ideology and how others
must act and very often are very
concerned
about ident, even just identities that
they perceive
as a threat to the identity which they
are seeking to create
as well as the ideology which they are
seeking to suffuse throughout the
society through the theocracy.
(EP): Absolutely and I mean, I think, the, the
very striking thing about China is that
everything which is about the individual -
individual freedom of belief,
individual independence as um, Sophie  Richardson
was saying
is discouraged. What is encouraged is um,
and, and supported by law, is
just following what the state says about
everything. So in a way, we can
sort of, I, I would say, that um, politics
really, that the love of the communist
party as it were, has taken the place of
religion but it's just as bad
as a religion for people who want to be
different. (AL):  And it could be seen
as an extreme example of what we see in
some
models of illiberal secularism or some
anti-secularist
models where freedom of religion and
belief is
removed from the, the concern about
individuals and individuality
and placed within a context of groups.
So if we see secularism as about
protecting
individual's rights to freedom of and
from religion,
some groups which, who wish to seek to
impose more religion
will talk about religious groups' right
to freedom of religion
over above the individual and some
groups who wish to
get rid of religion, will talk about the
group's right
to freedom from religion over and above
the individual again.
(EP): One could argue the whole point of
secularism although the western liberal
tradition and
think is like from, from J.S. Mill onwards,
you know, it's about
protecting the individual - that's what
life is about- it's about individuals.
It's not protecting
some group defined by a particular
authority.
(AL): Because it's up to individuals to define
their own identity.
Individuals can, are able to
reconcile their religious identity and
their national identity
but some nations wish to resolve that in
the way which
they choose for everyone rather than
allowing that individual
choice. (EP): Exactly and that's, that's what's
anathema to secularism
and, and I mean talking, talking of um,
state control in different ways of
individual
belief and individual manifestation of belief 
um, I think Sophie Richardson
mentioned this briefly that um, the
international response
so far has been pretty weak I mean, I
think including in Islamic majority
countries.
(AL): Yes, uh this actually is a point that our
honorary associate Nick Cohen
made in an important piece in The Guardian
over the weekend.
In that piece he actually also pointed
out that Chinese officials
have called criticism of what's going on
blasphemous
so that's another way in which the
theocracies
and these state atheist regimes can
mirror each other.
It's partly that illiberal, on the
international stage,
illiberal regimes regardless of the
specific ideological wrappings of the
regime
tend to stick together, so
an atheist authoritarian regime
and an Islamic theocracy probably
have more in common because the, of the
shared
uh, the shared authoritarianism, the
shared desire to impose
a particular uh, world view than
other states which, you know, which have
very different backgrounds
but are more towards the liberal
democratic secularist
end of the spectrum. It also goes to show
that
when theocratic regimes
criticize and make and call for
religious freedom
in the West that that's very much...
they're talking about their freedom,
they're talking about, again,
freedom of specific groups to have specific
practices rather than
any sort of genuine concern
for the individual rights. (EP): Absolutely and
it's always
freedom of them but used as a weapon to
sort of suppress other people's rights
to their own freedom
of speech and of expression. (AL): Absolutely.
(EP): I think the conclusion we can draw from
this whole podcast
is that China is definitely not
secularist in
any positive sense of that word.
 
