ROME — The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has struck back at U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for his searing criticisms of China’s ongoing human rights violations, stating that “the jabbering Pompeo would do well to keep his mouth shut about issues that are quite literally ‘foreign’ to him.”
“Mike Pompeo’s smearing remarks about China on human rights and religious subjects during his visit to Rome, the capital of Italy, reeked of ideological prejudice and ignorance toward China,” declared the spokesperson of the Chinese Embassy in Italy, according to an October 2 report in China’s state-controlled Global Times.
“When the People’s Republic of China was founded 71 years ago, Chinese people have taken a road that is most suitable for their own development,” said the spokesman. “They have ever since enjoyed an unprecedented sense of achievement, happiness and security.”
It is “most important to note what the 1.4 billion Chinese people have to say about the quality of China’s human rights and religious condition, rather than those irresponsible comments made by some foreign politicians,” he added.
Last Wednesday Mr. Pompeo spoke at a Rome symposium on religious freedom organized by the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See, in which he once again called out China for its atrocities.
Nowhere is religious freedom “under assault more than it is inside of China today,” Pompeo declared. “That’s because, as with all communist regimes, the Chinese Communist Party deems itself the ultimate moral authority.”
“An increasingly repressive CCP, frightened by its own lack of democratic legitimacy, works day and night to snuff out the lamp of freedom, especially religious freedom, on a horrifying scale,” Mr. Pompeo said, showcasing the horrifying treatment of the Uyghur Muslims of Xinjiang, but adding that “they’re not the only victims.
“The Chinese Communist Party has battered every religious community in China: Protestant house churches, Tibetan Buddhists, Falun Gong devotees, and more,” he said.
“Nor, of course, have Catholics been spared this wave of repression,” he continued. “Catholic churches and shrines have been desecrated and destroyed. Catholic bishops like Augustine Cui Tai have been imprisoned, as have priests and laity. And Catholic lay leaders in the human rights movement, not least in Hong Kong, have been arrested.”
“Authorities order residents to replace pictures of Jesus with those of Chairman Mao and those of General Secretary Xi Jinping,” he said.
“We must support those demanding freedoms in our time,” Mr. Pompeo said.
Last month, Mr. Pompeo offered a similar message in an essay for the American journal First Things.
“The human rights situation in China has deteriorated severely under the autocratic rule of Xi Jinping, especially for religious believers,” the secretary noted.
“Credible reports have exposed the Chinese Communist Party’s program of forced sterilizations and abortions of Muslims in Xinjiang, its abuse of Catholic priests and laypeople, and its assault on Protestant house churches—all of which are parts of a ‘Sinicization’ campaign to subordinate God to the Party while promoting Xi himself as an ultramundane deity,” he wrote.