Thanks to the enormous and relentless work of Bitter Winter, a magazine specialised in religious freedom and human rights in China, and its editor Professor Massimo Introvigne, more and more believers of the Church of Almighty God (CAG) are finding asylum in Italy.
As reported in an article published in Bitter Winter by Yang Feng, according to a Falun Gong report, in 2023, 1,188 worshippers were sentenced to death, while 209 were killed. The thorny issue of organ harvesting to which Falun Gong worshippers sentenced to death are subjected, but also believers of other religions such as Uyghur Muslims and Christians of the Church of Almighty God, has come to the attention of the European Parliament (...)
Humanity is experiencing an "emergency" period. If on the one hand the WHO has declared the Covid-19 emergency over, on the other hand the emergency pitting Ukraine and NATO on one side and Russia on the other side with the bugbear of nuclear conflict as a backdrop continues.
The Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games are upon us and the debate on whether to participate or boycott the event that will give more and more prestige to China, to its government by mitigating or hiding its policies of violation of human rights, is more current than ever. On the subject we publish an article signed by the scholar Zsuzsa Anna Ferenczy for Human Rights Without Frontiers.
Tibet Watch — Monks and civilians arrested and tortured in detention amid a wave of demolitions. Tibet Watch has learned from sources that another giant statue of Buddha was torn down amid a wave of ongoing demolitions in Drago County that has also seen a 99-foot Buddha statue, 45 prayer wheels, and a Tibetan monastic school torn down. Several monks and civilians were detained for expressing their disapproval. They have been given little food while in detention and at least some have been tortured.
While the West is celebrating the holiday season with, New Year and Epiphany, and China prepares to celebrate the Chinese New Year, the Tibetan people mourn the destruction - yet another - of a symbol of their millennial religion and culture implemented by the despotic and dismal dictatorship of the Chinese Communist Party. A little less than a month to the start of the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing, China is once again showing the international community its true face in disregard for the human rights that animate the Games and the feelings of the other participating nations.
2021 ends with good news for the CAG (Church of Almighty God), the Christian congregation targeted by the Chinese Communist Party. Two important sentences, one by the Supreme Court of Cassation and one by the Court of Rome, established that the members of the CAG are persecuted by the Chinese regime, both at home and abroad, and therefore have the right to asylum in Italy.
Dhongye has been in detention since 2018 with little information about his condition until now. According to a Tibet Watch source, Tibetan environmentalist Dhongye is in a ‘near-death’ condition after beatings and torture while in Chinese police custody in Driru County in the area of Tibet governed as the Tibet Autonomous Region. There are currently no further details about his whereabouts.
After numerous stances against the crimes perpetrated by the CCP against the Uyghur populations, configurable in the hateful crime of genocide, the time has come for concrete facts. A bill called the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (HR 6256), was passed by the United States House on December 14, 2021, and by Senate on December 16. Ratification by President Biden is now awaited.
TibetWatch — In September 2021, Trinley, a Tibetan monk from Kirti Monastery in Ngaba County (Ch: Aba), was given a five-year prison sentence after being found guilty of publishing the teachings and writings of the Tibetan spiritual leader, His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Ngaba County People’s Court held the trial in secret without the presence of his family members and lawyers.
How far can the hatred generated by intolerance towards religious minorities go? The article of which we repropose here below some excerpts provides an eloquent answer. In this case to pay the costs of the murderous hatred of ignorant Muslim crowds are faithful Hindus and Christians, i.e. the faithful of two of the major religions on Earth, in the Islamic world, however, they are often in the minority.
Washington, DC – The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) today released the following new report:
China Factsheet – This factsheet provides an overview of the new Chinese government Measures on the Management of Religious Clergy and their adverse impact on religious freedom in China.
by CAPLC, September 27th, 2021 — During this year’s UN General Assembly in September, “World Summit on Combating and Preventing Forced Organ Harvesting,” co-hosted by five non-governmental organizations from the US, Europe, and Asia and including a series of six online webinars, was held from Sept.
Tibet Watch — Two Tibetan youngsters named Yang Ri and Guldak were detained on 24 August 2021, in Darlak Township in Golog Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, which is governed as part of Qinghai Province. They were reportedly arrested for being outspoken about a recent notification that issued the complete replacement of textbooks in Tibetan with textbooks in Chinese. Local Authorities notified the parents and families about the change prior to the start of the fall semester, stating that from September 2021 onwards, all their children must go to school only with the newly introduced textbooks in Chinese. Photographic evidence received from sources shows police authorities sitting outdoors on the grassland explaining this to Tibetan parents.
by Ruth Ingram — The independent Tribunal aiming to examine evidence of China’s human rights abuses against the Uyghur people in China’s Xinjiang autonomous region, opened against a volley of attacks against the proceedings, which the CCP claimed were a “political farce” and “pseudo court” “used by terrorists and anti-China forces to smear China’s anti-terrorist efforts in the Xinjiang region.” Objecting to the aim of the tribunal, which is to assess whether a genocide has been carried out by the Chinese government against its own people, the Chinese Embassy in the UK joined forces with the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Government of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region to jointly condemn the event, slated as “another group of ‘actors and actresses’ getting together with anti-China forces” “in an attempt to offer sensational but fake materials to Western media and make stories about the ‘evil China.’”
Military search operation in Dza Wonpo Town enforced eight months on from the death in custody of 19-year-old Tenzin Nyima. On 22 August, around 200 military personnel and nine military vehicles arrived in Dza Wonpo Town and carried out mass arrests of around 50 people. The town is located in Sershul County, Kardze (Ch: Ganzi) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in the eastern Tibetan region of Kham. None of the detainees in Chinese police custody are allowed to meet their family or friends and the official reason for their arrest has not been disclosed.
by Gao Zihao — On August 17, 2021, the CCP’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection informed that it had expelled Peng Bo from the Party. The decision was taken “with the approval of the Central Committee of the CCP.” Peng Bo is the former deputy director of the Office of the Leading Group for Prevention and Handling of Xie Jiao Issues, i.e., one of the top bureaucrats involved in the repression of religious movements banned and included in the list of the xie jiao, a word the CCP itself translates into English as “cults” or “evil cults,” but whose meaning is “heterodox teachings.” CCP bureaucrats rise and fell continuously, but it is not common that press releases are issued, the approval of the Central Committee is mentioned, and detailed explanations are added.
by Hu Zimo — Totalitarian regimes have a thing for burning books, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) joyfully burn dissident books and destroys other material not approved of by the regime. In the festive climate of the 100th anniversary year of the CCP, it is recommended that this is done in public ceremonies to “educate the masses.” To explain how these modern auto-da-fés should be organized, a “pilot” book-burning and DVD-destroying ceremony was organized by the Ministry of Public Security in Kunming, Yunnan province, on July 16, in two locations. The aim was to show how to publicly destroy illegal religious material, in this case coming mostly from Falun Gong and The Church of Almighty God.
Following the invasion of Eastern Tibet by Mao's troops, euphemistically called the People's Liberation Army, on May 23, 1951 a 17-point agreement was signed between the representatives of Tibet and the authorities of revolutionary China, with which the Tibetans recognized Chinese sovereignty over Tibet under the threat that otherwise all of Tibet would be invaded. On the 70th anniversary of the agreement, Chinese President Xi Jinping went to Tibet to legitimize the persecutory work of his regime and his predecessors.
The long hand of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) tries, in ways that are as clumsy as they are desperate, to silence any voice of dissent to the single party thought, which is the only true religion allowed in China. In the following article, Professor Massimo Introvigne, director of the online magazine Bitter Winter as well as founder and director of CESNUR (Center for Studies on New Religions), tells with the irony that the case deserves, of the treatment he has been subjected to by some diligent and clumsy Chinese officials, revealing how a "respected" and feared government like the Chinese one is the source of fake news that threaten the fundamental freedoms of every human being.
