The Daily Signal - Ep. 293: Religious Persecution on the Rise in China

Episode Date: September 11, 2018

In China, men and women of faith are facing increasing hostility from the state. The Heritage Foundation's Olivia Enos shares what the Chinese are facing--from internment camps to having to share their home with a government official to seeing their Bibles seized. Plus: We discuss the rise of suicides in the United States in recent years. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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This Black Friday, you've got a whole month to catch all the exclusive offers waiting for you. See your local Nissan dealer or nissan.ca for details. Conditions apply. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Tuesday, September 11th. I'm Kate Trinko. And I'm Daniel Davis. China is taking new steps to crack down on religion. Christian churches are being shut down and Bibles are being burned as the Communist Party there demands complete loyalty.

We'll discuss the latest developments with Olivia Enos, a heritage policy analyst. Plus, Monday was World Suicide Prevention Day. We'll take a look at this discouraging statistics and what we can all do to save lives. But first, we'll cover a few of the top headlines. Well, President Trump is closing the Palestine Liberation Organization's mission in D.C., which is similar to an embassy and function. The administration cites the Palestinian leadership's refusal to move forward in the peace process with Israel. There is a provision in U.S. law that says that the Palestinian mission must be closed if the peace process doesn't move forward. Palestinian official

Saib Eiricott says, quote, this is yet another affirmation of the Trump administration's policy to collectively punish the Palestinian people, end quote. The closing of the mission comes just one week after the administration announced it would end funding for the UN agency that gives aid to Palestinian refugees. Evidence indicated that some of those funds had contributed to Palestinian extremism. In a speech Monday, National Security Advisor John Bolton spoke out against the International Criminal Court. This administration will fight back to protect American constitutionalism, our sovereignty, and our citizens. No committee of foreign nations will tell us how to govern ourselves and defend

our freedom. We will stand up for the U.S. Constitution abroad, just as we do at home. And as always, in every decision we make, we will put the interest of the American people first. you very much. Bolton also floated the idea of sanctions and said the U.S., quote, well, remember that cooperation when settling U.S. foreign assistance, military assistance, and intelligence sharing levels, meaning other countries cooperating with this court. Last year, the court prosecutor, Fatou Bin Soda, suggested the court should investigate U.S. actions in Afghanistan.

The court, which is based in the Netherlands, was launched in 2002. Well, Les Moonvez, the longtime CEO of CBS, is stepping down. Moonvez had come under heavy pressure to resign after six women accused him of sexual harassment. Those accusations were published in the New Yorker several weeks ago, but on Sunday, the New Yorker published a second article bringing new accusations against Moonvez from six other women. It was in the wake of that article that negotiations between Moonvez and CBS accelerated, and he's now leaving without a severance package. His final severance will be negotiated once an investigation into these claims is concluded.

CBS announced that $20 million of that severance will be donated to the Me Too movement and groups that support workplace equality. Today, veteran journalist Bob Woodward's new book, Fear About the Trump Administration, is out. On Monday, President Trump tweeted about the book writing, The Woodward book is a joke, just another assault against me in a barrage of assaults, using now disproven unnamed and anonymous sources. Many have already come forward to say the quotes by them, like the book, are fiction. Dems can't stand losing.

I'll write the real book. The president also tweeted Monday, The White House is a smooth running machine. We are making some of the biggest and most important deals in our country's history, with many more to come. I have to say if President Trump writes a book in the style of his tweets, I will be the first reader. I love it.

Well, Vice President Mike Pence recently blasted the author of an anonymous editorial in the New York Times, which purported to be written by a senior administration official. The op-ed openly criticized the president as being amoral, unmoored from any first principles, and held in check by his own staff. Mike Pence flatly rejected those claims on Sunday when he appeared on CBS's Face the Nation. Here's what he said. The writer of this anonymous New York Times op-ed identifies his or her circumstances. as a Trump appointee.

Who do you think wrote this? Well, I wouldn't know, but what I can say is it's a disgrace. I think the author of the anonymous editorial and frankly, the New York Times should be ashamed. But it seems to me to be just an obvious attempt to distract attention from this booming economy and President Trump's record of success. One of the claims made in the op-ed is that they're

in discussion of invoking the 25th Amendment to even remove the president from office. Have you ever been part of a conversation about that? No, never. And why would we be, Margaret? Nike's Colin Kaepernick ad continues to make waves. According to Edison trends, the sports company sales were up following the ad. Edison wrote, quote, The research confirms that at least for now, the company is suffering no negative repercussions in sales, end quote.

However, others aren't such fans. A Louisiana mayor, E. Ben Zahn, the third of Kenner, reportedly told his city's recreation department to not spend a dime on Nike going forward. And Truett McConnell University in Georgia announced it was ending, quote, its relationship with Nike in athletics and our campus store. The university's president, E. Mayor Canner, said, for Nike to then hire Colin Kaepernick, a person known for wearing pigs on his socks, mocking law enforcement, kneeling against our flag, and mocking our troops is reprehensible to my family and to the Truitt McConnell family. Well, up next we'll talk about the religious crackdowns occurring in China. Modern China has never been friendly to religion, but according to the Associated Press,

things have been getting worse under President Xi Jinping. The AP reports, quote, experts and activists say that as he consolidates his power, she is waging the most severe, systematic, suppression of Christianity in the country since religious freedom was written into the Chinese Constitution in 1982. The New York Times also recently reported on the increasing crackdown on Chinese Muslims. And Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida, tweeted Monday, Imagine what life would be like for our children if they inherit a world in which the

most powerful country is one that burns Bibles, ransacks Christian churches, and rounds up and detains Muslims in internment camps because that is what China is doing." Joining us today to discuss is Olivia Enos, a foreign policy expert at the Heritage Foundation. Olivia, what's going on in China right now? So the situation in China is really severe. We've seen as Xi Jinping has attempted to consolidate power in China, one of the first things that he's gone after has been freedom of religion. And we've seen this through a number of different measures that have been really concerning

In particular, there's this trend known as sinusization, which is affecting all religions. Essentially, sinusization is the secularization of religion and not just the secularization, but also this move toward making religion serve the Chinese Communist Party's ends. So it's trying to divert allegiance in many ways, but primarily just to serve the Chinese government's primary goal of consolidating power and of having that. type of allegiance. And we've seen particular actions that have been taken in February of this year. We saw the institution of regulations on religion, which have significantly heightened government oversight and restrictions on people of all faiths, practice of that religion. So how does this compare with some of the recent trends in China? I mean, Xi Jinping just started his

second term, right? So he had a previous term where he didn't have quite as much power. And there was an era before where people could be religious and go to church and things like that. And this seems different. Yeah, I think this is definitely different. We saw after the last People's Congress that this is really when he started to crack down on religion. These days, we're starting to hear of really horrible tales of Christians who are having their Bibles burn, their churches shuttered, pastors being detained at high record levels. And this has all been happening over about the past five years, but has been intensifying in particular over the last year or so. And it's not just Christians that are being impacted by this. We've been hearing absolutely horrific reports out of Xinjiang, which is the

western region of China, where there are predominantly Muslim minority known as Uyghurs, who human rights watch just put out a report actually today that suggests that there's as many as 1 million individuals being held in reeducation camps there. And individuals who are sent to reeducation camps are having their children placed up for either in orphanages or potentially up for adoption while they're being held in these reeducation camps. And beyond what's going on in Xinjiang, you also have horrific abuses occurring in Tibet where the Chinese have instituted this sort of grid style social management, both of which you see in Xinjiang, but also in Tibet as well, where, I mean, there's surveillance everywhere in every monastery, on every street corner.

I mean, in Xinjiang, there are even Chinese Communist Party officials moving into the homes of individual families. I mean, this is perhaps the grossest violation of not only personal privacy, but certainly of religious freedom. Because when they have the Chinese officials living in their homes, they're being asked to denounce. their Muslim faith. It's happening in particular during Ramadan season when they're being forced to eat pork and violate core tenets of the Muslim faith. It's really gotten out of control. Wow, that's just horrifying to imagine as a religious person, like having that sort of control over you. And for someone like me who's not very familiar with China's laws, is it technically illegal to practice religion of any extent? Like these people, these Uyghurs being sent

to these internment camps, these Christians having their Bibles burned? Were they doing something that was viewed as illegal that the state had previously turned a blind eye to? Or is this a new law or what's going on? So the Chinese government would say that technically everyone has the right to religious freedom and to practice their faith. But in practice, we know that that is the complete opposite from reality. I mean, there have been significant restrictions that have been put in place or have been more enforced in recent years, but there are actually new regulations from February 2018 that make the practice

of religion increasingly difficult. And so I think, you know, one example of this would be if you're under the age of 18, I believe, and I may be getting this wrong, but I think if you're under the age of 18, they don't allow you to undergo religious education of any kind. And I mean, for most faith practices, people recognize that your childhood is sort of a formative time where you're developing those various beliefs. And the Chinese government recognizes that and is making it impossible for families to raise their children in the way that they see fit under the religious beliefs that they believe to be true. Do you expect any U.S. or international response to this that significantly try to, you know, try to block what they're doing? Yeah. So Sam Brownback, who is the

current ambassador at large for the International Religious Freedom Office at State, he convened a really fantastic international religious freedom ministerial earlier this year where there were strong condemnations of China's persecution of people of all faiths. And both during that time and since that time, Ambassador Brownback, as well as, I believe, Secretary Pompeo, have called for the targeted financial sanctioning of individuals like Chen Kuan Guo who actually oversees a lot of the social management that took place previously in Tibet. He was, I believe, the party secretary there, but then he was transferred to Xinjiang, where he's been carrying out very similar policies. And they've recommended that he be sanctioned under Global Magnitsky,

which are sanctions authorities that allow individuals to be targeted on human rights and corruption grounds. I think this would be a really positive step forward because it would send a clear message to communist party members that the U.S. government is not going to turn a blind eye to people of all faiths having their religious freedom violated. I think, you know, another thing to do is just to have high-level meetings with religious leaders. President Trump, for example, could meet with the Dalai Lama. That would send a really clear signal that he is affirming the right of Tibetans to believe and practice Buddhism in the way that they see fit. He could also meet with other senior Chinese officials. And in the midst of conversations about other

key security issues or maybe even trade issues, he could raise some of these issues and concerns that the U.S. has about the fact that these religious freedom violations are taking place. So I think there are definitely opportunities to raise these issues and to send a clear signal to China that the U.S. is watching. So why do you think the Chinese government is so concerned about religious practice. And is there anything in particular that led to this most recent round of regulations in February? Yeah, I mean, I think that the Chinese government, like so many authoritarian governments around the world, recognize that religion gives an alternative authority to the government. And it requires the allegiance of the people to an authority that is,

frankly far higher than the government. And so they view that as threatening to their own grip on power and so oftentimes quell religion. Religion also promotes a certain freedom of ideas and a freedom of expression that I think you don't always see with other modes of thought. But I mean, in China, of course, they're not only restricting your freedom of religion, but even restricting access to information or modes of sharing information. I mean, the monitoring system, even on the average non-religious Chinese person is fairly significant. And so I think that that's what you see when you view authoritarian governments. They restrict information. And it has negative impacts and consequences for the average individual in those countries. Yeah, it's interesting how here in America

we talk about, sometimes we talk about religious freedom as our first freedom. And we often forget why it's our first freedom because we just take liberty for granted. But this is exactly why. In China, that, you know, religious freedom is kind of a gateway to many other kinds of freedom. And so to see the government clamp down on it, it won't be the first freedom to go. Oh, that's so true. And Kate, you also mentioned that things have increased since February. There are reports now out, including the Human Rights Watch report on Xinjiang that are suggesting that the level of persecution in Xinjiang in particular rivals or comes close

to the type of persecution that was occurring during the cultural revolution. This is very much reminiscent of the type of consolidation of power that we saw under Mao and definitely threatening to people of all faiths. So I was wondering if you could speak a little bit more about the situation that the Uyghurs find themselves in. Like what are these internment camps? I mean, it almost seems crazy in 2018 to be discussing internment camps. Yeah, it's amazing that this is still happening today.

these internment camps as the Chinese government would say are really for the purposes of quote-unquote re-education. Oh, how lovely. And so the idea is that they would be educated against so-called extremism. And this is the unfortunate conflation that the Chinese have made. They've said that if there's any sort of religious practice, it must necessarily lead to extremism. But we know that that's not the case. And so they're trying to educate people out of that extremism, to educate them about what their duties are as a good communist member of Chinese society. And they're trying to help them to sort of get back on the path toward becoming sinusized or becoming like an average Han Chinese.

And so they're experiencing, we've heard even deaths out of these camps, severe health issues. individuals who have been detained for days, weeks, months. I think some have even been over a year at this point. And so this is extended internment and extended. We barely even know what's going on. And the Chinese government themselves don't even acknowledge that it's happening. There's only been one official, I think, who's even made mention of it. And they wouldn't call it an internment camp.

Well, it's kind of reminiscent of the gulags right? In the Soviet Union back in the 20th century. Why do you think there's not been as much international attention put on this? Is it because there's a lot at stake with China geopolitically that we need them for various reasons? Or is it something else? You know, I think there are a lot of potential different reasons. I don't know exactly why. I mean, certainly we've been having a lot of negotiations over trade issues.

We've been talking to China about cooperating with us on our U.S. strategy toward North Korea. but I think over the long term, the real challenge is actually not so much silence from the international community specifically, but sort of the deafening silence from the Muslim world when it comes to this. You really have not heard people in the Muslim community crying out on behalf of their, you know, weaker Muslim brothers and sisters, and there just hasn't been this type of attention. And so I hope that the U.S. government certainly will raise these issues, but I hope we hear some things out of the Middle East and out of other Muslim-based countries that express support for Uyghurs. Okay. Well, thank you very much for joining us, Olivia. Thank you. Hi, I'm Kelsey Harkness, co-host of Problematic Women, a podcast in Facebook Live that showcases strong conservative women, current events, and the hypocrisy of the feminist left.

Subscribe and tune in for our weekly episodes every Thursday on iTunes, SoundCloud, or wherever you get your podcasts. Well, suicides are on the rise in America. The statistics are disturbing. In the last 20 years, the suicide rate has gone up by 25%. Monday was National Suicide Prevention Day, a perfect day to reflect on what each of us can do to save lives. Kate, what are your thoughts on some of the disturbing data that we see, but also what we can all do to prevent suicide. Right. Well, I mean, first of all, I don't think, I don't know how much any one person can do to prevent suicide. You know, I think there's probably a spike in mental illness, but, you know,

there's, there's so many things happening in our society right now that I don't think we really understand the implications of from the loss of practicing faith to families being disrupted, you know, even some of the digital trends, like how much time people are spending on their phones, you know, or on social media. There's been studying. showing that your depression can increase as a result of those things. So I think there's a lot of factors going on. We've seen what seems to me, at least, anecdotally, a spike in celebrity suicides in recent months. And I think it's just important for us to be aware of this.

And maybe, you know, I think Mother Teresa had this saying something like if you're trying to save the world or do something like, start by loving the ones near you or I just totally butcher that. But I think the idea should be that maybe realize we seem to be in a fragile time. And if you have a friend or a loved one or someone who doesn't seem okay, my understanding is it's really important to try to reach out, to try to be there for them. I mean, of course, it is no one's fault if something ends in suicide. But it can be really helpful for maybe people who are in the fringe if someone tries to be there for them. Yeah, it's interesting you mentioned that suicide is also becoming more visible among public figures. I mean, we've seen Anthony Bourdain recently, and we saw Robin Williams a few years ago.

That was a big shock. Just those kinds of things, it's becoming more. And then what was the TV show that kind of glorified suicide? 13 reasons why? Yeah, yeah. Well, I heard that that criticism of it. Obviously, it wasn't trying to glorify suicide. I didn't personally watch it.

I believe the criticism about it was it depicted suicide as an answer. are especially like, you know, of course teenagers and middle school students with the hormones and everything else are so vulnerable to, you know, these emotional mood swings. But it suggested that suicide wasn't a result of like a treatable mental illness, but like a real response. Like a legitimate way out. Right. And I think that's something that is so lost in our society right now that just because

things are bad right now does not mean they will be bad indefinitely. Does not mean there is no hope. Well, that's also something we see in some country. that have had euthanasia, like they call it the right to die, but essentially, you know, countries like the Netherlands and Belgium, you're seeing a lot more people being euthanized because not simply the idea is that they're suffering, right? So we need to be able to, you know, people need to be able to get out of their suffering some way. But the problem with that is that you can define suffering so broadly to the point where logically you're forced to say, well,

if I'm dissatisfied with my life, that's a form of suffering. So suicide. is then legitimate. And that's a really tragic, tragic end, a tragic way to take that. And I certainly hope we don't see more of that in the U.S. I know in California they legalized it, right? Right. And you're, I mean, I know you're from California. Yeah.

I mean, I'm not aware of anyone who's, I don't know, taking advantage doesn't seem like the right phrase, anyone who's done it. But, yeah, I think in the United States, you know, there's very few states right now where a physician assisted suicide is legal, but it does raise troubling questions. But I think even more so, you know, as you said in the intro, like suicide rates are up substantially in the past two decades. And that's something that, you know, it's just, it's astonishing in many ways. Like, we are in an economic boom. Like there are so many things going right. Like, we have a level of peace and prosperity that, you know, prior generations could have never imagined. And yet, you know,

there are so many troubling other signs, you know, like, as usual I'm forgetting the actual statistic, but so few people, you know, have friends to talk to. Like the number of close friends that people have has really been dropping. And there's so many other ways. And I think that it's something that we just, we need to take it seriously because we're seeing the cost right now. I mean, obviously, again, it's complicated. There's mental illness. There's a lot of factors at play. but I think it's so important for us to just reach out to those who appear in our own life or who seem to be struggling. And you never know. It might be the difference.

Yeah. And that's actually something that I've even experienced. I've never been suicidal. But I've had moments where I'm sort of discouraged and, you know, depressed about something. And someone will then come along and show an interest and, like, engaging. And that's really all it takes to kind of, you know, lift up my own spirits. and that's definitely a real thing. And so I think that's an encouraging thing.

Like we can be that person, that agent for lifting others up if we're, but we have to be able to see and to be aware, like alert to what other people might be experiencing in the first place. Right. And I think the other thing that maybe our culture has lost a lot of perhaps due to the decrease of religious practice is, you know, this gratitude. And it's something that like, you know, I believe there's studies showing if you like write down three things you're grateful for each day. Like your rate of depression is likely to decrease and things like that. So I wonder, too, if we just cultivate gratitude as a society more, if that's the sort of thing that could help bring hope and perspective and just, you know, just get our culture in a healthier place. I mean, to want to end your life is such an unhealthy thing that, you know, it really makes you think there's something really destructive and try. in our culture right now, that people really think that this is better.

Absolutely. In the midst of the, as you were saying, the greatest prosperity that any country in history has ever seen. Right. It sort of makes you wonder, maybe there's got to be something more to life than just prosperity. Right. Absolutely.

Well, we'll leave it there for today. But thanks so much for listening to the Daily Signal podcast. Brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation. Please be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or Soundflod. And please leave us a review. you or rating on iTunes to give us any feedback. We'll see you again tomorrow. You've been listening to the Daily Signal podcast, executive produced by Kate Trinko and Daniel Davis. Sound design by Michael Gooden, Lauren Evans, and Thalia Rampersad. For more information, visitdailysignal.com.