A magazine on religious liberty and human rights
An official U.S. report details the massive efforts deployed by the United Front, under the personal guidance of President Xi Jinping, to manipulate information about China abroad and contain criticism on the issues of religious freedom and human rights.
Between the government-controlled “red market” of religion and the banned and persecuted groups of the “black market,” lies the vast area of the religious “gray market,” including churches and temples that are neither legal nor explicitly banned as xie jiao and a number of other religious and spiritual activities. Massimo Introvigne
“Official” or “government-controlled” religions are often mentioned in China. Five religious bodies are indeed authorized by the regime, although even their liberty is limited. Massimo Introvigne
Since the late Ming era, China has used xie jiao to designate religious movements the government does not like. Their repression has always been brutal, but what a xie jiao is, is far from being clear.
Despite severe persecution, the CAG grew in China and, according to Chinese official sources, had reached four million members in 2014. Several thousand members have escaped abroad, where they have founded churches.
The U.S. Congressional Commission on China, chaired by Senator Marco Rubio, heard experts and witnesses on the growing persecution of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang.
Massimo Introvigne On May 24, 2018, a heated confrontation took place at the United Nations in New York. The United States and Germany accused China of keeping hundreds of thousands of Muslim Uyghurs in “re-education camps.” The Chinese representative answered that typically, Western governments and diplomats accept at face value fake news spread by anti-Chinese Muslim […]
Massimo Introvigne The launch of Bitter Winter has been greeted by a good media coverage, and has been covered with sympathy by several human rights and academic blogs and websites, from France to Australia. We did expect different reactions, too. One day after the launch,
Massimo Introvigne In the morning of November 26, 2017, He Linbo was arrested at the Shihezi City Train Station in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China. He was accused of being a leader of a banned religious organization. He was escorted to the police post of the train station, where he was physically searched […]
