Remembering political prisoners across China on Human Rights Day

Xin Ruoyua young mother in her thirties, violently disappeared in a Chinese “black prisonAround July 2024. She is being held extrajudicially, with the charges and length of her sentence unknown. Her alleged crimes were the creation of an app that provided users with access to Christian hymns, worship music and devotional material. To exercise her religious freedom, she was separated from her child and disappeared into China’s vast network of illegal detention facilities.

Xin is just one of more than 11,000 people the Congressional Executive Committee on China (CECC) has documented in its Political Prisoner Database (PPD), as highlighted in their latest Annual Report released on Human Rights Day.

Xin joins the ranks of many innocent people whom the CCP has deemed a threat to the Party. The Party is notorious for arresting political prisoners, more recently for targeting Pastor Ezra Ginn and about 30 other pastors and associates of Zion Church. Christians are not the only ones being targeted. The Annual Report highlighted political prisoners of many faiths, including Tibetan Buddhists, Falun Gong, Uyghur and Hui Muslims, and Jehovah’s Witnesses, among others.

Technically, people of faith in China are guaranteed a right to religious freedom Article 36 of the Constitution. The reality is exactly the opposite due to the policies of the C.K.C Sinicizationwhich require religious believers to ensure that their religious practice is in line with the aims and purposes of the Party, a secular institution.

The CECC report notes that the Party’s practice of arresting political prisoners and violations of religious freedom are just a few of the many ways the CCP repeatedly makes—and then breaks—promises to people across China.

The report emphasized that broken promises affect not only the Chinese people, but also Americans and the world:

This year’s report highlights the important role of human rights in US strategy and diplomacy. When forced labor undermines American workers, when government hostage-taking endangers our citizens, when censorship chills speech worldwide, and when international rules at sea are ignored, Americans pay the price—in security, prosperity, and credibility.

This, among other reasons, is why human rights should play a critical role in any effective and robust US foreign policy, particularly vis-à-vis authoritarian actors such as China. In the year ahead, the US should take seriously the threat posed by the CCP to human rights and freedom. One of the ways he could do this is to strengthen the tools at his disposal for the release of political prisoners.

As I argue in my Hudson Institute report regarding the release of political prisoners throughout China, the US should establish a Political Prisoner Advocacy Office and appoint a Special Envoy with the rank of ambassador to head the office. A more centralized office at the State Department has the potential to strengthen U.S. defense of extrajudicial detention cases across China for people like Xin Ruoyu, and could strengthen U.S. defense of political prisoners with American family members like Pastor Jin, Gulshan Abbas, Ilham Tohti and others.

On Human Rights Day, we must not forget the most vulnerable people across China – those held extrajudicially by the CCP. CECC’s new report serves as a vivid reminder of the plight of political prisoners and provides specific recommendations about what the US can do to better alleviate their pain and secure their freedom.