South Korean bishop: Before Pope Francis plans a trip, ‘some things in North Korea should change’

Yinchuan, China, Aug 10, 2018 / 04:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Officials in an autonomous region of northwest mainland China intended to demolish a mosque on Friday, but were met by hundreds of protesters. The move comes amid a nation-wide effort to clamp down on free religious expression.

Due to the protests, the local government has agreed not to demolish the mosque, but does insist on remodelling it in a more Chinese, and less Arabic, style, according to Nectar Gan of the South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong daily.

Officials had said Aug. 3 that the mosque would be demolished, on the grounds that it has not been granted the proper planning and construction permits. Protesters gathered in the mosque Aug. 9-10 to prevent its destruction.

Construction of the mosque had taken two years, and was not stopped by government officials.

The Weizhou Grand Mosque is located in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, more than 100 miles south of Yinchuan. Ningxia is a region set up for the Hui people, a Muslim ethnoreligious group.

The US Commission on International Religion wrote in its 2018 report that last year China “advanced its so-called ‘sinicization’ of religion, a far-reaching strategy to control, govern, and manipulate all aspects of faith into a socialist mold infused with ‘Chinese characteristics.’”

Christians, Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists, and Falun Gong practitioners have all been affected.

Earlier this year, widespread rumors suggested that the Vatican and the Chinese government were on the verge of regularizing the status of the Church in China and ending the split between the state-sponsored Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, whose leaders include illicitly-consecrated bishops, and the underground Church.

In Ningxia, sinicization has meant the removal from buildings of Islamic icons and Arabic signs, the South China Morning Post reported, as well as the removal of domes from mosques.

After scrapping the plan to demolish Weizhou mosque, officials first called for its domes to be replaced with pagodas, then for the removal of eight of its nine domes. Both have been rejected by the Hui.

Many mosques in Ningxia had been built in a Chinese style, but were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution of Mao Zedong. They have increasingly been replaced by more Arabic-looking buildings.

In neighboring Gansu province, local officials in Linxia banned children in January from attending religious events during winter break. Many Hui also live in Gansu.

In July, AFP reported that Communist Party officials in Linxia had banned children under 16 from religious activity or study. They have also restricted the number of students over 16 allowed to study at mosques and the certification process for new imams. Mosques have been instructed to display the Chinese flag and not to transmit calls to prayer.

“They want to secularise Muslims, to cut off Islam at the roots,” an imam told AFP. “These days, children are not allowed to believe in religion: only in Communism and the party.”

The AP reported in May about the existence of re-education camps for Muslims in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The region, which borders Gansu’s west, is home to the Uyghurs, another Muslim ethnoreligious group.

According to the AP, authorities in Xinjiang “have ensnared tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of Muslim Chinese – and even foreign citizens – in mass internment camps.”

A UN human rights committee heard Aug. 10 that these camps hold more than 1 million Uyghurs.

In August 2014 officials in Karamay, a city of Xinjiang, banned “youths with long beards” and anyone wearing headscarves, veils, burqas, or clothes with the crescent moon and star symbol from using public transit. That May, universities across the region banned fasting during Ramadan.

Chinese president Xi Jinping announced in October 2017 that he wants to tighten Beijing’s strict government controls on religion. At the National Congress of the Communist Party, he said religions not sufficiently conformed to communist ideals pose a threat to the country’s government, and therefore must become more “Chinese-oriented.”

In March 2018 the Chinese Communist Party became directly responsible for government oversight of religion.

Catholics and other Christians have had their church buildings demolished in numerous Chinese provinces in recent years, including Shandong, Henan, Zhejiang, and Shaanxi.

On March, Bishop Vincent Guo Xijin, who ministers to the underground Church, loyal to Rome and not the state, was detained for refusing to concelebrate a Chrism Mass with an illicitly consecrated, state-backed bishop. He was then released but forbidden from celebrating his own Chrism Mass.

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A young Catholic attends the papal Mass at Gelora Bung Karno Stadium in Jakarta on Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024. / Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA

CNA Staff, Sep 6, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).
Pope Francis on Tuesday landed in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta… […]

St. Paul’s Church, in Imphal, capital of Manipur state, after the church was set on fire in 2023. / Credit: Anto Akkara

Bangalore, India, Mar 28, 2024 / 12:30 pm (CNA).

After Indian officials’ announcement that Easter Sunday would be a “working day” this year was met with widespread protests from Christians, the governor of the state of Manipur in northeast India issued a statement reestablishing the annual holiday.

The March 28 reversal by the Manipur government, which is led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came within 24 hours after Manipur Gov. Anusuiya Uikey canceled the Easter holiday.

“In partial modification of the government order … dated 27th March, 2024, the governor of Manipur is pleased to declare that only the 30th March 2024 [Saturday] will be working day for all government offices,” the order read.

The previous day the government had announced that “the governor of Manipur is pleased to declare 30th [Saturday] and 31st [Sunday] March 2024 as working days for all government offices.”

Christians account for nearly half of Manipur’s population of 3.7 million. 

Archbishop Linus Neli, who heads the 100,000-strong Catholic Church in the state, told CNA that the Church had protested the cancellations of the Easter holiday to government officials. 

“We are storming the competent authority, awaiting reply,” Neli said.

A half an hour later, the archbishop shared with CNA the government’s “revised order regarding [Easter] working day.”

Prior to that, several Christian groups including those in Manipur had called for the cancellation of the order that stunned the Christians across the country.

“The decision to declare these sacred days as regular working days is not only insensitive but also disrespectful towards the religious sentiments of the significant portion of the population in Manipur,” lamented the Senapati District Catholic Union of Manipur in its condemnation of the governor’s order on the morning of March 28.

Of the 3.7 million Christians in Manipur state, 26% are ethnic Naga tribals, 16% are members of Kuki tribes, and more than 10% of the nearly 2 million Meiteis have also embraced the Christian faith in Manipur.

“By compelling government offices to operate on these holy days, the order not only disregards the religious rights of the Christian community but also fails to recognize the cultural diversity and religious pluralism that should be upheld and respected in democratic society,” the Senapati district Catholic forum pointed out.

“Height of insanity of the Manipur government,” a Christian pastor from Manipur who runs a theological college outside Manipur told CNA.

“What is happening is Manipur is nothing new,” John Dayal, an outspoken Catholic columnist and activist, told CNA.

“The BJP governments both at the national level and in several states had tried to insult and tinker with Christian holy days like Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter several times in the past,” Dayal pointed out.

“In 2002, I moved the Delhi High Court successfully against the bid to make Good Friday and Easter Sunday ‘working days’ against the Atal Behari Vajpayee [who was the BJP prime minister then],” said Dayal, a former member of the National Integration Council headed by the prime minister.

“This Manipur move is keeping with [Prime Minister] Modi’s consistent scheme to whittle away rights of Christianity and Islam in new ‘Bharat.’” (Bharat is the new name the Hindu nationalist BJP has proposed for India).

Since May 2023, Manipur has seen a protracted violent clash between the majority Meiteis, most of them Hindus, and the minority Kukis (all of them Christians) that has left more than 230 dead by the official conservative death toll. Over 50,000 Kuki Christians have been chased out from the Imphal valley along with over 10,000 Meiteis who were driven out from Kuki strongholds.

Amid the violence, over 600 churches have also been destroyed. The majority of them were Kuki, but 250 Meiti Christian churches were destroyed as well in what is seen as an attempt to stop Meiteis from embracing the Christian faith. 

Meanwhile, in another piece of good news for the Christian community, Carmelite Sister Mercy, who had been arrested on a charge of “abetting the suicide” of a sixth-grade girl at the Carmel School in Ambikapur in central Chattisgarh state, was released on bail on March 28 by the trial court.

The girl student committed suicide at home after the nun had questioned her and two other girls for being together in the bathroom for a long period of time. After other students complained to the nun, she asked the girls to bring the parents to school the next day.

Following the suicide of the girl, Hindu nationalist organizations promptly organized a huge crowd to march to the school. Police were brought in and arrested the nun the next morning. Although the large crowd tried to storm the school on Feb. 8, police prevented an arson attack.

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