Open Letter Urges Attorney General Barr To Label Chinese Communist Party as a Transnational Criminal Organization

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Open Letter Urges Attorney General To Label Chinese Communist Party as a Transnational Criminal Organization

CCP Violations Far Exceed ‘Criminal Activity’ Threshold,

say Save the Persecuted Christians, Other Human Rights Watchdogs

WASHINGTON — A broad coalition of human rights advocates on Thursday delivered an open letter to Attorney General William Barr asking him to officially condemn the Chinese Communist Party as a criminal outfit responsible for violating human rights, committing injustices around the globe, and causing millions of deaths worldwide.

 

Save the Persecuted Christians (STPC), a leading international human rights advocacy group, sent the letter and petition requesting that Barr designate the CCP a “transnational criminal organization,” which the FBI defines as posing “a significant and growing threat to national and international security with dire implications for public safety, public health, democratic institutions, and economic stability across the globe.”

 

“For far too long, the world blindly ignored the menacing criminality of the Chinese Communist Party,” said Liz Yore, esq., founder of YoreChildren and a partner of Save the Persecuted Christians who authored the letter. “The Trump Administration is rightly taking a tough stance against the unrelenting corruption and repression of the CCP. It is time that we speak the truth and call out the CCP in all its brutality. The CCP is a transnational criminal organization, and the Trump Administration needs to designate it as such, so that the full prosecutorial power of the federal government can outlaw these global gangsters. As Secretary of State Mike Pompeo promised, ‘we won’t stay still while Communist China tries to crush the world’s freedoms.’”

 

STPC, together with the Committee on the Present Danger: China (CPDC), argues the Chinese Communist Party deserves this label due to its verified illegal activity and desecration of human rights.

 

“It is exceedingly evident that the list of transnational criminal organizations should include the Chinese Communist Party (CCP),” the letter states. “The pattern of the CCP criminality in the U.S. and around the world demonstrates a clear and present threat ‘to public safety and national security.’”

 

The CCP’s criminal activity reaches far beyond China’s borders, where victims and international organizations have long been reported. Having practiced human rights abuses against its own people for 70 years, the communist organization now threatens Americans, according to STPC and other signers of the letter.

 

“The CCP’s lethality and criminal sophistication demonstrates that this lawless CCP poses a clear and present danger to the health, security and prosperity of America,” the letter states.

 

Examples of the CCP’s criminal actions that harm American citizens include distributing lethal synthetic drugs, which kill more than 31,000 a year, proliferating economic espionage, and deliberately concealing the severity of the coronavirus, which has now caused more than 129,000 American deaths.

 

International human rights watchdogs decry the ever increasing persecution of people of faith under the Communist regime, where churches have been blown down, faith communities attacked, and church leaders incarcerated or disappeared. Members of the Falun Gong have for decades been subjected to criminal organ harvesting. And between 1 and 3 million ethnic Uyghurs are kept in modern-day concentration camps as slave laborers subjected to torture, forced abortion and sterilization.

 

Designating the CCP a transnational criminal organization would qualify the crime outfit for legal, economic, and diplomatic penalties. STPC argues this is the least the United States can do after standing by silently for so long. With more than 100 signatures on the petition, many Americans agree.

 

“The global reach and level of lethal organized criminal activity by the CCP is astonishing and demands its immediate designation and prosecution as a transnational criminal organization,” the letter states. “Nothing less leaves Americans vulnerable to a widespread campaign of lawlessness, intimidation, and piracy by the CCP which imperils our way of life.”

 

In addition to YoreChildren, STPC, and the CPDC, signers include Global Alliance Against Communist Disinformation and Propaganda, Montagnard Stand For Justice, Christian Activist Network of New England, Mission America, Bitter Winter, Committee for Religious Freedom in Vietnam, Boat People SOS – Religious Freedom Project, Revealing Light Ministries, and Citizen Power Initiatives for China, and the Jubilee Campaign, among nearly 600 other individuals and organizations.

 

The mission of Save the Persecuted Christians is to save lives and save souls by disseminating actionable information about the magnitude of the persecution taking place globally and by mobilizing concerned Americans for the purpose of disincentivizing further attacks on those who follow Jesus.

With so much of the world’s Christian population being imprisoned and/or harassed for their beliefs, including Christians in China, the need has never been greater for the sort of grassroots campaign STPC’s SaveUs Movement is working to foster. Its efforts are modeled after a miraculously successful one that helped free another population suffering from heavy persecution—Soviet Jews—by penalizing those in the Kremlin responsible for such repression. Through this movement, Save the Persecuted Christians endeavors to provide American policymakers with the popular support they need to effect real change worldwide and alleviate systemically the suffering being experienced by so many of those following Christ.

US closes Chinese consulate in Houston: Explaining this escalating conflict and its relevance for American Christians today

Read time: 5 minutes | Read online

In The Daily Article for July 23, 2020

  • Why tensions between the US and China are rising
  • What I learned in Beijing
  • “Cancel culture” and Christian courage

People look on as the Houston Fire Department responds to reports of a fire inside the Chinese Consulate on Tuesday, July 21, 2020 in Houston. Houston police and fire officials responded to reports that documents were being burned in the courtyard of the consulate Tuesday night, according to the Houston Police Department. China says the U.S. has ordered it to close its consulate in Houston in what it called a provocation that violates international law. (Mark Mulligan/Houston Chronicle via AP)

NOTE: My latest website paper, “What does the Bible say about cancel culture?” is now available. I invite you to read it here.

Yesterday, the US ordered the abrupt closure of the Chinese Consulate in Houston. The Wall Street Journal reports that the State Department is accusing China of conducting massive illegal spying and influence operations throughout the US against our government officials and citizens. The State Department adds that such activities have increased in recent years.

The closure order coincided with Washington’s unveiling on Tuesday of indictments against two hackers in China. They are accused of targeting American firms involved in coronavirus research and stealing hundreds of millions of dollars in sensitive information from companies around the globe. This was done, according to the US, on behalf of Beijing’s main civilian intelligence agency.

The Journal adds that US officials have become increasingly concerned in recent years about China’s use of its Washington embassy and five consulates around the country to advance espionage and political influence operations. The Houston consulate has drawn particular scrutiny.

A Chinese official responded: “China urges the US to immediately rescind its erroneous decision, otherwise China will undertake legitimate and necessary responses.”

Worshiping Xi Jinping 

This is just the latest episode in a long-running conflict between the US and the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

The US Defense Secretary said earlier this week that our military is equipping and positioning its forces across Asia for a possible confrontation with China. The US recently declared China’s claims in the South China Sea to be unlawful.

China’s record on human rights, especially with regard to its minorities, is beyond horrific. The Uighurs, a Muslim minority, have been subjected to forced sterilization and abortion in a form of “demographic genocide.” Chinese Christians are being pressured to renounce their faith and to spy on other believers.

It has been reported that Christians who receive social welfare payments from the Chinese government have been ordered to remove crosses and religious symbols from their homes or lose their subsidies. One official posted portraits of Mao Zedong and Xi Jinping in a Christian’s home and said, “These are the greatest Gods. If you want to worship somebody, they are the ones.”

My experience in Beijing 

I was invited some years ago to deliver a series of lectures in Beijing. One request came from a group of professional leaders who asked me to lecture on business ethics. When I asked them to define the problem they most wanted to discuss, they identified corruption and a lack of honesty in their business culture.

This is a symptom of the larger worldview at work in the PRC. The second paragraph of the Communist Party of China’s constitution states that it “takes Marxism-Leninism” as its first guide. It adds, “Marxism-Leninism brings to light the laws governing the development of the history of human society.”

When I was a seminary professor teaching philosophy of religion, I taught a section on Marxism. Its foundational worldview places the state ahead of the individual and rejects any religious authority or ethical construct. The good of the state is the good of the people. Whatever serves the state is to be valued.

If this means spying on competitors, stealing coronavirus research, or oppressing religious minorities considered dangerous to the state, such immorality is embraced. What the participants in my business ethics seminar called corruption and a lack of honesty is how business is done. The bottom line for the state is the bottom line.

National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien recently stated what has long been true in China: “Under communism, individuals are merely a means to be used toward the achievement of the ends of the collective nation-state. Thus, individuals can be easily sacrificed for the nation-state’s goals. Individuals do not have inherent value under Marxism-Leninism. They exist to serve the state; the state does not exist to serve them.”

“Cancel culture” and Christian courage 

What do recent developments with China mean for Christians?

One: We must redouble our intercession for our sisters and brothers who are standing courageously for Christ in their communist country. Let us daily ask God that they would “be strengthened with power through his Spirit” (Ephesians 3:16).

Two: We must follow their courageous example. What is happening in China shows what can happen anywhere a society abandons objective morality. The “golden rule” then becomes “the one who has the gold makes the rules.” If the majority rejects biblical ethics, for example, those who embrace them will face ostracism and worse. When the ship has no rudder, it will lean wherever the majority of its passengers lean.

“Cancel culture” is especially a problem for those of us who stand for biblical morality. Like the apostles, we must say to those who would censure and condemn us, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:19–20).

Where are you being tempted to compromise with our fallen culture? I encourage you to read Hebrews 10:32–39 and claim this promise: “Do not throw away your confidence [in God], which has a great reward” (v. 35).

And remember this assurance from St. Teresa of Avila today: “Let nothing frighten you. Who has God, lacks nothing. God alone is enough.”

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