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Religion: China objects to U.S. views

By P. S. Suryanarayana

SINGAPORE Dec. 22. Beijing has expressed its "strong displeasure'' at and "resolute objection'' to the U.S. `interference' in its internal affairs in the guise of raising religious issues.

Rejecting the U.S. State Department's International Religious Freedom Report 2003, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Liu Jianchao, said Washington's action was "extremely unfair and absolutely unreasonable''. Announcing the release of America's fifth annual report on the political space available to various faiths across the world, the U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, John Hanford, had said on December 18 that certain states were "attempting to control religious belief''. He placed China alongside North Korea, Vietnam and Myanmar in this category. He noted, too, that certain countries were "stigmatising particular religions by wrongfully associating them with dangerous cults or sects''.

Though the American report was obviously prepared before the summit between the U.S. President, George W. Bush, and the Chinese Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao, in Washington on December 9, Mr. Hanford's references to China have struck a jarring follow-up note. At the summit itself, Mr. Bush voiced views that pleased Beijing on Taiwan.

Commenting on some specifics of the U.S. report, China urged Washington to take better care of its own domestic religious freedom instead of always criticising other countries. Significantly, China has for some time now adopted the practice of monitoring the U.S.' record on human rights and commenting on it on the basis of documentation.

Mr. Liu asked the U.S. to make efforts that could be "conducive to mutual understanding and cooperation'' between Beijing and Washington, instead of "interfering in China's internal affairs''. China, Mr. Liu maintained, "has been protecting its citizens' religious rights in accordance with the law''. All ethnic groups and people from all over China enjoyed religious freedom, he underlined. Within this framework, China "bans, in accordance with the law, illegal or criminal activities'' by such organisations as the Falun Gong cult in the name of religion, he said.

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