By Tendar Tsering
DHARAMSHALA, September 17: The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) yesterday slammed a report by the US State Department which accused China of enforcing “laws and policies that restrict religious freedom” in Tibetan areas.
The US State Department in its annual report on International Religious Freedom released earlier this week had expressed continued concern over the protection of fundamental human rights in Tibet citing that “the government’s level of respect for religious freedom remained poor in Tibet.”
The State Department had also placed China in a list of ‘Countries of Particular Concern’ which includes countries like North Korea, Sudan, and Iran.
In response, the CCP on Friday fired back at the report stating that the US document was full of distorted facts and warned the State Department to stop interfering in China’s domestic affairs.
China’s official news agency, Xinhua, in a report said that state-appointed secretaries of the five major religious groups in China (Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism) held a meeting to respond to the US report and released a statement after the meeting.
“The development of various religions in China has been healthy and different religious groups coexist in harmony while religious people feel happy,” Xinhua quoted the CCP statement as saying.
Xinhua further quoted the CCP statement as saying that the US report ignored basic facts and attempted to “smear the image of China.”
However, the Chinese official statement failed to address some of the most pressing issues raised in the US report concerning the increased restriction over religious practices in Tibetan monasteries, the routine implementation of patriotic re-education of Tibetan monks and nuns, and the alarming instances of suicides by Tibetans protesting China’s ‘extraordinarily right’ control over religious freedom.
Three Tibetan monks in China occupied Tibet have self-immolated and died calling for the return of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and religious freedom in Tibet in recent times.
