New disaster relief initiative unveiled in Australia

CNA Staff, Jul 29, 2020 / 03:50 pm (CNA).- Archbishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney on Wednesday called the New South Wales government a “disgrace” for failing to enact anti-slavery legislation.

The Australian Parliament had passed such a law t… […]

Urumqi, China, Sep 25, 2018 / 06:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Sept. 21 joined voices from Pakistan and around the world in denouncing Chinese repression against a Muslim minority, as China continues to put pressure on almost all religions within its borders.

Uyghurs are a Turkic-speaking ethnic minority that mainly inhabit the vast Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The advocacy group Uyghur Human Rights Project estimates that approximately ten percent of the Uyghur population, or some 1 million individuals, are being extrajudicially detained in a system of internment camps.

While also mentioning his concern for Christians in China amid a recent intensifying of governmental repression, Pompeo decried the treatment of the Uyghurs by Chinese authorities.

“Their religious beliefs are decimated,” Pompeo said.

An Aug. 13 report from the United Nations detailed the violent crackdowns on members of the minority in Xinjiang, which China claims is not based upon religion but rather in response to terrorism threats in general. According to the BBC, violence in the region escalated in the 1990s and again in 2008.

“In the name of combating ‘religious extremism’ and maintaining ‘social stability’…China had turned the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region into something that resembled a massive internment camp shrouded in secrecy, a ‘no rights zone’,” the report states.

“[M]embers of the Xinjiang Uyghur minority, along with others who were identified as Muslim, were being treated as enemies of the State based on nothing more than their ethno-religious identity.”

Authorities in Pakistan, China’s closest ally in the Muslim world, also warned against escalating persecution of the Uyghurs.

Noorul Haq Qadri, Pakistan’s Federal Minister for Religious Affairs and Inter-faith Harmony, advised Chinese Ambassador Yao Jing that Beijing’s crackdowns on Uyghur activity would only fuel extremism rather than mitigate it.

The Chinese ambassador reportedly promised that his government would allow a Pakistani delegation of religious scholars to visit Xinjiang, according to Pakistani media.

The Chinese government, led by President Xi Jinping, has made numerous moves recently to curb religious freedom in the country, including the demolishing of Christian churches and sending Muslims to so-called “reeducation camps” for offenses as minor as wearing beards, veils and other distinctive markers of Islam. In September, the government made it illegal for any religious prayers, catechesis, or preaching to be published online.

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.

The Holy See signed a deal with Beijing Sept. 22 to give the Chinese government some power over episcopal appointments in exchange for bringing the underground Church above ground, ending the split with the state-sanctioned Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association.

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Colombo, Sri Lanka, Apr 21, 2019 / 01:45 am (CNA).- At least 100 people were killed in explosions Easter morning, detonated in churches and hotels across Sri Lanka. Hundreds more are reportedly injured.

At 8:45 a.m., explosions were detonated during Easter Mass at churches in the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, and in Negombo, a city 20 miles to its north. At the same time, a bomb exploded at a service at the evangelical Zion Church in Batticaolo, on Sri Lanka’s east coast.

 St. Anthony’s Shrine was the Catholic church targeted in Colombo, and St. Sebastian’s is the Catholic parish in Negombo.

Pews were shattered by the blast at St. Anthony’s Shrine in Colombo, and floors and ceilings were covered in blood. The shrine is the most well-known Church in Sri Lanka, and is designated the country’s national shrine. The first chapel on the Church property was built during Sri Lanka’s Dutch colonial period, when Catholicism was mostly forbidden on the island.

There were also explosions Sunday morning at three luxury hotels in Colombo.

Sri Lanka’s prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, called on Sri Lankans to remain “united and strong” in the face of “cowardly attacks on our people today.”

No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks. In recent weeks, there has been concern that Sri Lankans who had been part of the Islamic State could become a threat, as they have begun returning to the country from the Middle East, according to the BBC.

The country has been plagued with periodic violence since its 26-year civil war concluded in 2009.  

Sri Lanka is an island nation in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal; its population is more than 21 million. More than 70% of Sri Lankans are Buddhists, roughly 13% are Hindus, almost 10% are Muslims, and fewer than 8% are Christians. There are 1.5 million Catholics in the country, constituting the overwhelming majority of the Sri Lanka’s Christians.

In a January 2015 visit to the country, Pope Francis urged peace and reconciliation among the country’s rival factions.

“In this difficult effort to forgive and find peace, Mary is always here to encourage us, to guide us, to lead us,” the pope said Jan. 14, 2015, at the Our Lady of Madhu shrine in Sri Lanka’s Mannar district.

“Just as she forgave her son’s killers at the foot of his cross, then held his lifeless body in her hands, so now she wants to guide Sri Lankans to greater reconciliation, so that the balm of God’s pardon and mercy may bring true healing to all.”

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