PEKING AND RELIGION

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP78-03061A000400010020-6
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 28, 2012
• Sequence Number: 20
• Publication Date: June 5, 1966
• Content Type: REPORT

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/06/28: CIA-RDP78-03061A000400010020-6
Excerpts from China Mail
5 September 196
}"Peking -and Religion"
"Peking will certainly find it more difficult from now on to convince
people that religious practices are tolerated in mainland China.
Recent events, including the expulsion from Peking of eight nuns, one
of whom died in Hong Kong, demonstrate once again the totally anti-
religious character of communism.
"Groups of Red Guards roamed the streets of the city closing do?m
religious buildings -.-. Catholic, Protestant and Islamic -- and destroy-
ing Biblical paintings and windows.
"The anti-religious demonstrations could prove to be a serious setback
to Peking's hopes of establishing closer relations with the developing
countries, particularly those in the Middle East and Africa.
"For several years Peking has been trying to gain the good will of
predominantly Islamic countries by fostering the impression that all
people in China, including Moslems, enjoy complete religious freedom.
But behind this facade of religious tolerance, Moslems in mainland
China are, in fact, faced with a very different situation.
"Land, livestock, and other property belonging to mosques have been
taken over by co-operatives and communes.
"Most religious leaders have been secularized and religious instruction
in Arabic is now forbidden in schools.
"Moslems who still try to practice their faith are forbidden to
slaughter animals for religious feasts and are strongly discouraged
from fasting during Ramadan.
"In addition, the work schedule in factories and communes makes it
virtually impossible for any religious observances to be carried out.
Absenteeism from work is regarded as being counter-revolutionary.
"Those who have been persuaded by Peking propagandists that Moslems
among other belaevers in mainland China are free to practice their
faith must, after the recent events during which at least one mosque
was invaded and desecrated, be revising their opinion.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/06/28: CIA-RDP78-03061A000400010020-6
 Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/06/28: CIA-RDP78-03061A000400010020-6
June 1965
Reign of terror
In his Press statement on June 20, 1959, the Dalai Lama said that
the Chinese in Tibet maintained "a reign of terror which finds few
parallels in the history of Tibet. Forced labour, compulsory exactions,
a systematic persecution of the people, plunder and confiscation of
property belonging to individuals and monasteries and execution of
certain leading men in Tibet, these are the glorious achievements of
the Chinese rule in Tibet."
Tibetan refugees report that the Communists ferociously suppressed
a popular uprising in 1959. Lamas and monks seem to have been perse-
cuted especially cruelly. Reports speak of Lamas being flayed, buried
and burnt alive, hanged, shot, crucified, stoned and dragged behind
trucks. One of the refugees, Losang Nudup, said that he and five
other monks joined a group of resistance fighters in 1959 because they
could no longer endure Chinese aggression. Wounded and captured by
the Chinese, he and two other monks were interrogated while their
bound wrists were pulled up tightly behind their backs. Scarcely able
to breathe, their bodies became blue and swollen. They were then
taken to prison and put in chains. Food and drink consisted of a mug
of hot water or a handful of barley flour twice a day.
Two months later, they were compelled to destroy a monastery's
religious images with picks and shovels. Jewels and precious metals
from the images were seized by the Chinese. Sacred books were burned
and the ashes used as manure. Small pagodas were dismantled and the
stones engraved with prayers were used to build a public toilet. The
monks were then sent to another prison where the Chinese guards forced
the prisoners to torture each other. Though the guards would some-
times kill prisoners, most deaths were from starvation. Losang Nudup
was released after completing a five-year sentence. A Ladakhi by
nationality, he was sent back to India in 1965.
A Tibetan woman, who recently escaped to India, reported that she
had seen many monks from Lhasa building roads, and that only a few
old, infirm monks were allowed to remain in the monasteries to main-
tain them as showpieces of religious "freedom." In 1960, the Inter-
national Commission of Jurists found that China had committed genocide
against the Tibetans as a religious group. In 1964, the commission
stated that the latest evidence available to its legal inquiry committee
disclosed further ill-treatment of monks, lamas and other religious
figures. Deaths had occurred through torture, beatings, starvation
and forced labour. The Chinese had also continued to send Tibetan
children to China against their parents' wishes, in order to indoctri-
nate them with Communist ideas and deprive them of a religious up-
bringing.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/06/28: CIA-RDP78-03061A000400010020-6
 Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/06/28: CIA-RDP78-03061A000400010020-6
August 1966
PRESSURE ON CHINA'S CATHOLICS
One of the rare interviews with foreign newspapermen permitted in
Communist China was published on June 14 in the independent Milan
Corriere della Sera, whose correspondent was allowed to visit an old
Chinese Catholic parish priest.
It soon became clear why the interview was allowed: the priest
had been told to keep to the Party line. The priest confirmed through
an interpreter that the Catechism could not be taught in church;
children must learn it at home from their parents, if at all. The
Church subsisted on the offerings of the faithful. The old priest did
not know anything about the general situation of the Church in China;
he could speak only for his own Peking parish.
The priest repeated the authorities' allegations that the Holy See
had excommunicated Catholics who failed to oppose the Communist Govern-
ment; that it had ordered them to take up arms against the government
and, if all else failed, to leave the country.
On June 19 the Vatican journal Osservatore Romano pointed out
that China's estimated 3 1/2 million Catholics had been subjected to
relentless pressure by the Communists ever since they came to power in
1949. The Vatican had never ordered Catholics to fight or leave, or
excommunicated any of them. Clergy were gaoled, missionaries expelled
and the process of "'re-moulding" the Catholics soon began. In 1957
the Communist-sponsored Catholic Patriotic Association was set up, and
the following year two new bishops were "elected" and consecrated with-
out benefit of Rome. By 1966 their number had grown to 40.
The interview took place in the priest's presbytery, where, the
journal noted, a. bust of Mao Tse--tung, covered with flowers, stood
between statues of Christ and the Virgin.
Other religions have fared equally badly in China, the Delhi
`thou ht recalled on July 9. Muslims, for example, who numbered about
10 million, had lived in various parts of China for over 10 centuries
soon after the Communists came to power, Muslims were deprived of their
traditional wag' lands around the mosques. Many mosques were closed,
desecrated or put to secular use. The Muslims of Sinkiang lost their
Arabic alphabet, and their rising of 1962-w3 was ruthlessly put down.
The Ceylon Dail News commented on June 30 that China's campaign
against Islam at home was incompatible with its loud calls for Arab
unity in the Middle East. Muslims in China, it said, had objected to
land reform because the Koran forbade the acceptance of other people's
land and property.
(Cont.)
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/06/28: CIA-RDP78-03061A000400010020-6
 Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/06/28: CIA-RDP78-03061A000400010020-6
Most Chinese Muslims, it went on, belonged to ethnic minorities
the Hui, the Uighur, Kazakhs, Uzbeks and Tartars, all proud peoples
with rich traditions, hardy people and fierce hunters. They had not
given in to "re-moulding" without a struggle, but were now being
forcibly "assimilated" --~: large numbers of the Chinese Tian majority
had been settled in their midst. And in Asia and the Middle East, the
Chinese Communists pose as the champions of Arab unity!".
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/06/28: CIA-RDP78-03061A000400010020-6