China has transformed Xinjiang into a ‘mass detention camp’ – UN

China's government has had an "anti terror" campaign in majority-Muslim Xinjiang region - meaning increased surveillance, arrests and detention. (Photo: JOHANNES EISELE/AFP/Getty Images)
The United Nations has raised alarm over the tens of thousands of Uyghur Muslims being held in detention centres in Xinjiang, northwest China. In a report last Thursday, the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination said the Chinese government had “transformed the autonomous region of the Uyghurs into . . . Read More

‘Lack of religious freedom anywhere is a threat everywhere,’ Sam Brownback tells religious freedom summit

Christian leaders in Iran have said that pressure on Christians increases every year around Christmas but that this year it is particularly severe. (Photo: World Watch Monitor)
The US Ambassador for International Religious Freedom, Sam Brownback, urged government and faith leaders, and civil society, to work together to enhance global religious freedom, at the opening of the first-ever Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom in Washington DC yesterday (24 July). In his opening words, Brownback, who was appointed in . . . Read More

China’s Communist Party increases control over religious affairs

The opening ceremony of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in Beijing, held in October 2017. The Congress is the most important political event in China where decisions taken by the Central Committee are endorsed. (Photo by Prachatai via Flickr; CC 2.0)
China’s Communist Party has disbanded its Religious Affairs Bureau to bring religion under the control of the party’s Central Committee, in what some observers see as a further tightening of the belt. The State Administration of Religious Affairs (SARA) is to be absorbed by the United Front Work Department, an . . . Read More

China: 100 Christians sent to ‘re-education’ camps in Xinjiang

China: 100 Christians sent to ‘re-education’ camps in Xinjiang
More than 100 Christians have been sent to “re-education” camps in China’s north-western Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the past few months, World Watch Monitor has learned. In these camps, also known as “study centres” or “mind-transformation centres”, they are taught how to be loyal to the communist ideology. Most . . . Read More

China: 6 Christians jailed as pressure on churches increases

Group of Christians praying together in Beijing. (Photo: World Watch Monitor)
A Chinese court in the southwestern province of Yunnan sent six Protestant Christians to prison last week for their membership of an “evil cult”. The verdict comes as part of a provincial crackdown on cults, as the ruling Communist Party continues its national campaign to restrict unregistered churches before new religious . . . Read More