Religious Freedom Commissioners ‘Flattered’ by China’s Sanctions

The leaders of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) said Sunday they are “flattered” to be on the list of those the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has sanctioned.

Gayle Manchin and Tony Perkins, the chairman and vice chairman of the USCIRF, wrote in Sunday’s Wall Street Journal that the CCP sanctions represent “a desperate attempt to silence international scrutiny of Beijing’s abysmal human-rights record, particularly its genocidal policies against the Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang and its persecution of other religious minorities.”

“We won’t be intimidated or silenced,” the chairmen stated, and “we are proud that USCIRF has long been at the forefront in exposing the Communist Party’s egregious religious-freedom violations.”

They went on:

In fact, we’re flattered by the Chinese government’s recognition for our work in defending religious freedom in China, as we join an increasing list of courageous American, European and other officials on whom the party has likewise applied sanctions for standing up to a regime that has violated its obligations under the Genocide Convention.

As Breitbart News reported, last summer the USCIRF accused the Chinese government of creating “an Orwellian surveillance state with an unprecedented ability to gather private information about its citizens,” which it is using to monitor Christians and other religious minorities.

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