Before the coronavirus even hit the United States, China’s high-profile history of religious persecution laid the groundwork for many to distrust its handling of the outbreak.
Since March, a growing number of people have said that they do not believe President Xi Jinping’s government’s statements about its efforts to contain the virus, which originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan. A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center found that, by the end of the month, about two-thirds of people in the U.S. viewed China unfavorably — and an overwhelming majority saw Chinese power as a threat to America.
Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, a longtime critic of China, told the Washington Examiner that these attitudes should come as no surprise. Cotton pointed particularly to the recent and well-publicized expositions of the Chinese government’s practice of confining religious minorities, such as Uighur Muslims, to “gulag reeducation camps.”
“Governments that treat their own people in such brutal ways would think nothing of lying about a virus death toll to preserve their own power,” Cotton said.
China’s persecution of religious minorities entered the public consciousness last year when protests in Hong Kong against the Chinese government shut down the island city and ignited a debate over Chinese violations of human rights. The demonstrations called into question the terms of American business relations with China when the communist nation threatened to cut ties with the National Basketball Association because of tweets supporting Hong Kong protesters posted by Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey.
The situation also raised outrage about China’s lack of transparency regarding its treatment of Uighurs, a Muslim ethnic minority of which more than 1 million have been imprisoned in the Xinjiang province since 2017. The two issues collided in a controversial episode where a man holding a sign supporting the group was ejected from an exhibition match between the Washington Wizards and a Chinese team.
The tense nature of the subject permeated the 2020 presidential race as well. During a December debate, former Vice President Joe Biden, along with other Democratic candidates, criticized China’s treatment of Uighurs, saying the U.S. should not tolerate it. When Biden referenced the “million” Uighurs “in concentration camps,” Chinese authorities blacked out the debate’s feed for those watching the debate in the communist country.
China’s opaque coronavirus response is from the same playbook as its response to past controversies, Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse told the Washington Examiner. The regime is “terrified that free thought might undermine the party’s legitimacy,” Sasse said, so it attempts to squelch any form of free speech to maintain control.
“It’s the same reason they throw religious minorities into torture camps,” he said. “It’s the same reason they depend on censorship. It’s the same reason they tried to crush the Hong Kong protests. This is what communists always do.”
A March report from the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, a federal watchdog agency, found that since the coronavirus outbreak began, Chinese persecution of ethnic minority Muslims has increased. In Wuhan, Uighurs were reportedly forced to continue working in factories during a citywide quarantine, despite the high risk of contracting the disease.
Uighurs who were quarantined have also faced discrimination, with Chinese authorities limiting their access to food and demanding payment for basic necessities, the report found.
Ambassador Sam Brownback, the State Department’s point man for international religious freedom, in early April called upon Chinese authorities to acknowledge their mistreatment of “millions” of religious minorities and to release them.
At the same time that China has obscured its treatment of religious prisoners, it has also pursued a general policy of suppressing information about the coronavirus pandemic. After months of denial, the regime admitted last week that the death toll in Wuhan was 50% higher than originally stated.
China’s miscount of fatalities, as well as its treatment of religious minorities, prompted many people to speculate that the virus was created in a Wuhan laboratory and that the Chinese government intentionally downplayed its effects once it was released.
During a press conference last week, President Trump addressed the lab theory. Although he refused to discuss any conversations he has had with Xi, Trump said that the U.S. was conducting a “thorough” investigation of the virus’s origins. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo added after the conference that China needs to “open up” about where the virus came from, noting the possibility that it may have originated in a lab.
Pompeo asked the Chinese government in November to “cease all harassment” of Uighurs after numerous reports of detention camps were released. The Chinese government denied, and still denies, that any such camps exist.
