China will ban foreigners from talking about religious ceremonies online without a license
Photo: Mark Schiefelbein / AP
China will ban all foreign organizations and individuals from distributing religious content online in order to protect national security. Reported by the South China Morning Post.
Now foreigners can speak on the Internet about religious ceremonies only under a license from the PRC regulator. A five-department regulation called “Measures to manage religious information services on the Internet” will go into effect in March.
The new rules state that applicants for a license to distribute religious content must be legal entities or individuals based in China and recognized by Chinese law, and their main representative must be a citizen of the PRC.
Earlier, Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, spoke of the importance of “Sinification” of religion and called for greater control over religious activities on the Internet. According to the leader of the PRC, religion should not violate public order and moral norms or interfere in educational, judicial and administrative issues or public life.
This is not the first time that official Beijing has attempted to control the religious life of its citizens. The issue of religion has become confrontational for the Chinese authorities and Western states because of the PRC's policy towards Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Muslims living there were forbidden to call their children their traditional names, forced to eat pork and drink alcohol. The network also appeared information about the resettlement of representatives of the titular nation in Uyghur families and the encouragement of Uyghur women who decided to sterilize.
In early March, the Newlines Institute said the Chinese authorities had violated each of the prohibitions of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. What is happening to Muslim Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur region of China can be considered extermination.
On October 6, a former PRC police detective who fled to Europe recounted how the Chinese authorities tortured Muslim Uighur prisoners in order to extract confessions. The police said the detainees were beaten, electrocuted and gang-raped to make them take the blame for terrorism.
