Will communists, pseudo-secularists and leftists, who always ‘cry’ about ‘increasing intolerance’ in India, open their mouth to protest such actions by Chinese Govt ? – Editor, Hindujagruti

Beijing : China’s government is burning bibles, destroying crosses, shutting churches and ordering Christian followers to sign papers renouncing their faith, according to pastors and a group that monitors religion in China.

The accounts have appeared amid an apparent, massive crackdown launched by Beijing against religion as a whole.

Besides Christianity, millions of Muslims in far-west China have been facing forced political indoctrination at alleged ‘brainwashing camps’ where they have to eat pork and drink alcohol as ‘punishment’, said human rights groups and former detainees.

Whereas, children in traditionally Buddhist Tibet have been banned from taking part in religious activities during the summer holidays.

Under President Xi Jinping, China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, religious believers are seeing their freedoms shrink dramatically even as the country undergoes a religious revival.

Experts and activists say that as he consolidates his power, Xi is waging the most severe systematic suppression of Christianity in the country since religious freedom was written into the Chinese constitution in 1982.

In explaining China’s motives of the alleged religious suppression, Sophie Richardson, the China Director of Human Rights Watch, told MailOnline: ‘The Chinese government has long treated any organised religious groups with disdain and hostility.’

‘It doesn’t matter if it is Christianity, Islam or Buddhism, it considers them as a vehicle and mechanism to carry out political disloyalty and separatism,’ Dr. Richardson added.

Bob Fu of the U.S.-based group China Aid, who is also a pastor, said over the weekend that the closure of churches in central Henan province and a prominent house church in Beijing in recent weeks represents a ‘significant escalation’ of the crackdown.

‘The international community should be alarmed and outraged for this blatant violation of freedom of religion and belief,’ he wrote in an email.

Fu posted video footage of what appeared to be piles of burning bibles in Henan on his Twitter account. He also provided forms stating that the signatories had renounced their Christian faith.

He said that marked the first time since Mao’s radical 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution that Christians had been compelled to make such declarations, under pain of expulsion from school and the loss of welfare benefits.

China has an estimated 38 million Protestants, and experts have predicted that the country will have the world’s largest Christian population in a few decades.

A Christian pastor in the Henan city of Nanyang said crosses, bibles and furniture were burned during a raid on his church on September 5.

The pastor, who asked not to be identified by name to avoid repercussions from authorities, said several people entered the church just as it opened its doors at 5 am and began removing items.

He said the church had been in discussions with local authorities who demanded it ‘reform’ itself, but no agreement had been reached or official documents released.

Chinese law requires religious believers to worship only in congregations registered with the authorities, but many millions belong to so-called underground or house churches that defy government restrictions.

A local official reached by phone at the Nanyang city government disputed the account, saying officials respected religious freedom. The man declined to give his name, as is common with Chinese bureaucrats, while a person answering phones at the local religious affairs bureau said they were ‘not clear’ about the matter.

In Beijing, the Zion church was shut on Sunday by around 60 government workers who arrived at 4:30 p.m. accompanied by buses, police cars and fire trucks, the church’s pastor, Ezra Jin Mingri, said Monday. Zion is known as the largest house church in Beijing, with six branches.

The officials declared the gatherings illegal and sealed off church properties, Jin said, after already freezing the pastor’s personal assets in an apparent attempt to force him to comply with their demands.

‘Churches will continue to develop. Blocking the sites will only intensify conflicts,’ Jin told The Associated Press by phone.

A notice posted Sunday on the website of the Chaoyang district government in Beijing said the Zion Church had been closed because it failed to register with the government.

All of China’s officially recognised religions appear to have been affected by the crackdown.

In the most extreme example, an estimated one million Uighurs and other members of Muslim minority groups in the country’s northwest have been arbitrarily detained in indoctrination camps where they are forced to denounce Islam and profess loyalty to the Communist Party.

Omir Bekali and Kayrat Samarkand, both former detainees, told the Washington Post in May that the prisoners were been forced to eat pork and drink alcohol, forbidden in Islam, as punishment.

Human Rights Watch said in a 117-page report released today that 13 million Muslims in China’s far-west Xinjiang Province are subject to political indoctrination, collective punishment, restrictions on movement and communications, heightened religious restrictions, and mass surveillance in violation of international human rights law.

The report is primarily based on interviews with 58 former residents of Xinjiang – a region traditionally inhabited by Islam followers – including five former detainees and 38 relatives of detainees, according to the New York-based human rights group.

Kairat Samarkand, said to be a former detainee in a re-education camp is quoted by Human Rights Watch saying the Chinese government wanted to ‘exterminate Muslim People, Muslim writing and Muslim dress’.

Mr Samarkand, who has fled China and now lives in Kazakhstan, also said: ‘They are planning a country that’s homogeneous. Everyone has to be Chinese.’

‘The Chinese government is committing human rights abuses in Xinjiang on a scale unseen in the country in decades,’ commented Sophie Richardson at Human Rights Watch.

China has been told to immediately release the Muslims being detained in alleged political re-education camps on the ‘pretext of countering terrorism’ by United Nations’ human rights experts.

The Chinese government have said that it is taking necessary measures to eliminate extremism, but denied setting up the camps.