Chinese Communist Party gravest threat to religion, says Mike Pompeo

Mike Pompeo­ wants Indonesian Muslim leaders to speak out against China’s treatment of Uighur­s.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has appealed to Indonesia’s Muslims to speak out against China’s treatment of Uighurs. Picture: AFP

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo­ has urged Indonesian Muslim leaders to speak out against China’s treatment of Uighur­ Muslims, calling the Chinese­ Communist Party the world’s “gravest threat” to relig­ious freedom.

Mr Pompeo made the appeal in an extraordinary speech in Jakarta­ on Thursday to Ansor, the youth wing of Sunni Islam movement Nahdlatul Ulama, in which he spoke of the obligation for all people of faith to honour human dignity.

“The gravest threat to the ­future of religious freedom is the Chinese Communist Party’s war against the people of all faiths — Muslims, Buddhists, Christians and Falun Gong practitioners alike,” he said.

“The atheist Chinese Communist Party has tried to convince the world that its brutalisation of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang is part of its counter-terrorism efforts­, or poverty ­alleviation, dependin­g on which audience they are speaking to.

“But you know and we know that there is no counter-terrorism justification for forcing ­Uighurs to eat pork during Ramadan or destroying­ a Muslim cemetery. There’s no poverty alleviation justificati­on for sterilisation, for taking children away from their parents for re-education in state-run boarding schools.”

The US government says China has detained more than a million Muslims, and that ­Uighurs have been targeted for matters as minor as reciting from the Koran at a funeral. Thousands of children have been separated from their parents and, recent reports have ­alleged women have been forcibly subjected to methods of birth control.

China has rejected such claims as “fake news” and defended the mass incarceration as aimed at countering terrorism.

Indonesia’s leaders have been reticent to comment publicly on the Uighur issue, wary of being seen as meddling in the domestic affairs of its powerful neighbour and largest trading partner.

Even as the US and other Western nations have spoken out against China’s treatment of its Uighur population, Beijing’s efforts­ have helped soften critic­ism of its treatment of Uighurs by Muslim-majority nations.

Alluding to those efforts, Mr Pompeo said he was aware that Beijing had “tried to convince Indonesians to look away … from the torments your fellow ­Muslims are suffering”.

“I know that these same Chin­ese Communist Party officials have spun fantastic tales of happy people eager to discard their ethnic religious and cultural identities to become more modern and enjoy the benefits of CCP-led ­development,’’ he said.

“When you hear these arguments, I just ask you to search your hearts, look at the facts, listen to the tales of the survivors. Think about what you know — of how authoritarian governments treat those who resist its rule.”

Mr Pompeo said there were now dozens, if not hundreds, of credible reports documenting the “immense human suffering” taking­ place in the western Chinese province. He appealed to Indonesia­n Muslims as “people of faith” to honour their obligation to protect human dignity “by protecti­ng the weak and comforting the afflicted”.