Uyghurs

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Dramatic story of Kyrgyz Christian swept up in China's Uyghur repression gets very little ink

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Dramatic story of Kyrgyz Christian swept up in China's Uyghur repression gets very little ink

In all the stories about Ukraine and the genocide/war happening there, it’s easy to forget the other genocide going on in western China.

A number of weeks ago, Axios.com published a short about China’s “crime’s about humanity” there, particularly against the more than 1 million Muslims who are imprisoned in this 21st century gulag.

Lost in the details of this story is a second angle that would be of great interest to lots of readers in the United States and elsewhere — that Christians too have been caught up in the dragnet.

A Christian Chinese national who spent 10 months in a Xinjiang detention camp has arrived in the United States after months of behind-the-scenes lobbying by U.S. lawmakers, human rights activists and international lawyers.

Why it matters: The man, Ovalbek Turdakun, will provide evidence that international human rights lawyers say is vital to the case they have submitted to the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor arguing that China has committed crimes against humanity in Xinjiang.

Here are several crucial details in this overlooked story:

* Ovalbek and his wife and child were authorized to enter the U.S. on significant public benefit parole, which permits entry for special purposes such as testifying in a proceeding, but does not grant immigration status, because of the value of the testimony they are expected to give. Ovalbek crossed the borders of several Asian countries to get out, finally landing at Dulles Inernational Airport on April 8. Thus:

The big picture: Ovalbek Turdakun is a unique witness to Chinese government repression in Xinjiang, according to international lawyers, U.S. officials and others with knowledge of the case.


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Do athletes have a moral duty to protest Chinese authoritarianism? How about Elon Musk?

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Do athletes have a moral duty to protest Chinese authoritarianism? How about Elon Musk?

Do elite international athletes have a moral responsibility to publicly comment or act in a way that acknowledges their awareness of oppressive — or worse — political conditions in nations in which they compete?

Do societal moral standards require them to speak up, even when criticism and confrontation jeopardize their ability to compete and may threaten to derail an entire career?

The Beijing Winter Olympics — scheduled to begin in early February in and around China’s capital city — makes this a timely question.

Several democratic nations have announced “diplomatic” boycotts of the Beijing competition. They include the United States, Australia, Britain, Canada, Denmark, and Japan. (To be clear: democratic claims alone do not necessarily stifle a nation’s darker impulses and render it “moral.”)

That means that no political office holders from the the boycotting nations will attend these Games, but qualifying athletes are free to make their own choices about competing.

The following paragraphs from the above linked Washington Post article explain the limits on free speech China is demanding (with International Olympic Committee acquiescence).

The IOC has said athletes will be free to express themselves during the Games as long as they abide by IOC rules barring any demonstrations during sporting events or medal ceremonies.

Athletes could raise any number of issues, including allegations of cultural genocide against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, the erasure of civil freedoms in Hong Kong, and the arrests of human rights lawyers, activists and outspoken Chinese citizens. [Note that the Post left Tibetan issues, a major international sticking point for the West, off this list.]

But Chinese authorities are extremely sensitive to criticism about the country’s human rights record, its role in the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic, and even the country’s efforts during the Korean War.


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Nashville 2021 revisited: For Southern Baptists, sermons are part of how their work gets done

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Nashville 2021 revisited: For Southern Baptists, sermons are part of how their work gets done

Whenever the Southern Baptist Convention gathers in times of trials and turmoil, one thing is certain -- someone will preach a sermon that makes a difference.

That's how Southern Baptists do what they do. These sermons may not produce as many headlines as SBC elections or fiery debates about hot-button social issues. But the sermons matter.

The big sermon during the 2021 convention in Nashville came at a logical moment -- when SBC President J.D. Greear gave his farewell address, just before tense voting to elect his successor.

In this "defining moment" address, the leader of the Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, N.C., offered a stinging quote about an elephant that has camped in the SBC fellowship hall.

"We have to decide," Greear said, "if we want our convention primarily to be a political voting bloc or if we want it to be a Great Commission people. … Whenever the church gets in bed with politics, the church gets pregnant, and the offspring does not look like our Father in heaven."

America is important, he stressed. But America is not the whole picture for believers striving to build churches around the world. "God has not called us primarily to save America politically. He has called us to make the Gospel known to all," said Greear.

Southern Baptists can agree that "no compromise should be tolerated" on crucial social issues, he said. And no one wants to stop defending the inerrant truth of the Bible.


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Yes, there's a religion story behind those statistics about China's shrinking population

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Yes, there's a religion story behind those statistics about China's shrinking population

China made the news again last week for an odd reason — its demographics.

Only 12 million babies were born last year in China, the lowest number since 1961. You can think of 35 years of forced abortions and mandatory IUD devices for that. Oh, and going after the offspring of Uyghur Muslims, house-church Christians, Tibetan Buddhists and Falun Gong practitioners figure into that number, as well.

But the details of that important religion angle didn’t make it into the stories I read. In the New York Times:

Figures from a census released on Tuesday show that China faces a demographic crisis that could stunt growth in the country, the world’s second-largest economy. China has long relied on an expanding and ambitious work force to run its factories and achieve Beijing’s dreams of building a global superpower and industrial giant. An aging, slow-growing population — one that could even begin to shrink in the coming years — threatens that dynamic.

Now listen to how the next paragraph explains how this happened.

While most developed countries in the West and Asia are also getting older, China’s demographic problems are largely self-inflicted. China imposed a one-child policy in 1980 to tamp down population growth. Local officials enforced that policy with sometimes draconian measures. It may have prevented 400 million births, according to the government, but it also shrank the number of women of childbearing age.

“Sometimes draconian” measures? Forcibly aborting a woman’s second child is, by definition, draconian.

Beijing is now under greater pressure to abandon its family planning policies, which are among the world’s most intrusive; overhaul an economic model that has long relied on a huge population and a growing pool of workers; and plug yawning gaps in health care and pensions.

Well, yes, when local cadres monitor the exact timing of women’s periods to make sure they’re not pregnant, that’s pretty intrusive.


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AP story on secret North Korean missionaries should be of interest to all

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It seems like just another story about missionaries to North Korea. Then you realize that this Associated Press story is about North Koreans who somehow escape their country to take refuge in China, then return to their native land to secretly convert other North Koreans to Christianity. That's a new angle.

These stories are not easy to get. First, you have to have contacts in an obscure corner of northeast China who will talk with you. You also need decent translators who understand religious terms.

Then you need to connect the dots between the North Korean government and a group of determined Christians just across the Chinese border. So as you read this, look for signs of research, the sources for facts and insights.

Also, notice the life-and-death stakes. This is dangerous territory. The further you read on, the better the plot gets.

SOUTHERN JILIN PROVINCE, China (AP) -- To the North Koreans gathered beneath a crucifix in an apartment in this northeastern Chinese border region, she is known as “mom.” She feeds them, gives them a place to stay and, on occasion, money.
In return, the 69-year-old Korean-Chinese woman asks them to study the Bible, pray and sing hymns. She also has a more ambitious, and potentially dangerous, goal: She wants the most trusted of her converts to return to North Korea and spread Christianity there.
Along the North Korean border, dozens of such missionaries are engaged in work that puts them and their North Korean converts in danger. Most are South Koreans, but others, like the woman, are ethnic Koreans whose families have lived in China for generations. In recent years, 10 such front-line missionaries and pastors have died mysteriously, according to the Rev. Kim Kyou Ho, head of the Seoul-based Chosen People Network, a Christian group that runs a memorial hall in the South Korean capital for the victims. North Korea is suspected in all those deaths.

We’re then told why this secret missionizing might be of interest to the greater world at large.


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