China Remains a “Country of Particular Concern” (CPC) for Human Rights Abuses for 21st Straight Year

(Minghui.org) According to the annual report published by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) on April 28, 2020, China was designated as a “Country of Particular Concern” for the 21^st time in a row for its systematic and severe suppression of religious freedom.

Gary Bauer, the commissioner for USCIRF, said in an interview with The Epoch Times that the Chinese communist regime is the world’s “worst abuser of religious liberty” and that he hoped “there was an even worse designation” to use for the regime.

Bauer said that “China has declared war on all religious faith” and “there is no room for seeking God under Chinese communism.”

USCIRF’s newest annual report cited a research paper from BMC Medical Ethics that indicated the forcible harvesting of organs from Falun Gong practitioners is still continuing on a significant scale.

The annual report also highlighted China’s massive surveillance of its people. It stated, “The Chinese government has created a high-tech surveillance state, utilizing facial recognition and artificial intelligence to monitor religious minorities.”

In addition to the USCIRF annual report, two other reports this year also criticized human rights abuses by the Chinese Communist Party.

On January 8, 2020, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) released its 2019 report, which stated that the human rights and rule of law situation in China continued to worsen.

On March 4, 2020, the Washington D.C. based NGO Freedom House published a new report “Freedom in the World 2020.” In the report, China was listed as “one of the 15 worst-performing countries,” with only 10 out 100 points for the global freedom score.

Since it came to power 71 years ago, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been suppressing the Chinese people to maintain its totalitarian power. After it ordered the persecution of Falun Gong, an ancient spiritual discipline, in 1999, the human rights status and degree of freedom have continued to decline in China.

Many human rights organizations are calling on the U.S. government to impose sanctions on Chinese officials responsible for the religious persecution by freezing their assets and barring their entry into the U.S., based on the Global Magnitsky Act.