USCIRF:China’s Use of Torture Against Religious Leaders

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, a federal body that monitors global religious freedom, issued an overview on China’s persecution of religious leaders and its 2025 annual report. Both documents warn that China seeks total control over religion and that the U.S. Department of State should again designate China as a “country of particular concern.

USCIRF states that religious leaders who refuse to submit to the state’s control face surveillance, fines, retribution against family members, detention, political reeducation, forced labor, imprisonment, enforced disappearance, and torture. In Xinjiang, detainees have been subjected to abuse in political reeducation camps including torture, rape, forced sterilization, and forced abortion. Tibetan monks imprisoned for resisting state control face political reeducation, torture, and medical neglect. Protestant leaders detained on fabricated charges report physical assault to extract confessions. Collectively, these findings indicate that torture is part of a wider system of coercion.

The reports tie the repression to the Chinese Communist Party’s policy of “sinicization of religion.” This policy forces groups from the five officially recognized religions to align beliefs, worship, leadership, language, and religious sites with party ideology. Leaders who preserve independent doctrine, resist registration, or maintain ties that the state deems “foreign” are treated as political threats.

Forms of torture and abuse documented

The abuses documented include political reeducation, forced labor, rape, forced sterilization, forced abortion, medical neglect, and physical assault in custody to obtain confessions. Authorities also use enforced disappearance and secret detention, leaving families without information on their loved ones.

USCIRF and cited nongovernmental reports provide names, sentences, and outcomes across communities:

• Muslim leaders: A 2021 report identified over a thousand Turkic imams and religious figures detained or imprisoned since 2014. Kazakh imam Erjan Quwash received 21 years and Uyghur imam Dadihan 20 years. Ninety-six-year-old Uyghur imam Abidin Damollam died in prison in 2024. Uyghur women leaders including Tursungul Ghopur, Buwihelchegul Sidiq, and Ezizigul Memet received long sentences, while Heyrinisa Memet was reportedly sentenced to 14 years in 2024 for teaching Qur’an to minors.
• Tibetan Buddhists: Scholar-monk Go Sherab Gyatso is serving a 10-year sentence. Choegyal Wangpo, Lobsang Jinpa, and Norbu Dondrub received sentences of 20, 19, and 17 years in 2020 for religious communications and offerings. The abbot Humkar Dorje Rinpoche died under suspicious circumstances in 2025 after disappearing in China in late 2024.
• Protestants: House church leaders face fraud and “illegal business operations” charges. Pastor Wan Changchun received five years in 2025. About a dozen members of Golden Lampstand Church were sentenced in 2025, including 15 years for pastor Yang Rongli and nine years and two months for Li Shuangping. Under anti-cult provisions, Pastor Kan Xiaoyong of Home Discipleship Network was sentenced to 14 years after alleged torture to elicit a confession. In 2025, Gao Quanfu and other Zion’s Light Church leaders were detained on cult charges, and Mingdao in Shenyang was reportedly assaulted in custody.
• Catholics: Underground Bishop Peter Shao Zhumin was fined about $27,880 for public Mass in February 2025, detained for a week in March for refusing to pay, and detained again before Holy Week. Authorities reportedly pressured him in July to accept the state-controlled association by arresting and threatening clergy and laity. The whereabouts of underground bishops James Su Zhimin and Joseph Zhang Weizhu remain unknown.

USCIRF notes that leaders and laypeople are also documented in its FoRB Victims List, including figures such as Jimmy Lai and Wang Yi.

USCIRF concludes that religious freedom conditions in China remain among the worst in the world. Instead of protecting belief, China’s framework of laws, the seven state-controlled religious organizations, and the 2021 Measures on the Management of Religious Clergy are used to vet, register, surveil, and control clergy. The goal is to turn religious communities into extensions of the party and to eliminate non-CCP influences.

Other measures used to repress religion

Beyond torture and detention, the reports describe:

• – High-tech surveillance around places of worship
• – Raids on house churches and fabricated charges such as fraud and subversion
• – Five-Year Sinicization Work Plans that enforce loyalty and conformity
• – Removal of crosses, forced display of CCP slogans, and CCP-aligned preaching
• – Restrictions on monastic life, expulsions from Buddhist academies, and bans on enrolling monks
• – Control over reincarnation processes, including the Panchen Lama case and plans to control the Dalai Lama’s succession
• – Transnational repression and disinformation using emerging technologies
• – Expanding forced labor programs and residential boarding schools to assimilate minorities

The reports list numerous imprisoned leaders, including Erjan Quwash, Dadihan, Go Sherab Gyatso, Choegyal Wangpo, Lobsang Jinpa, Norbu Dondrub, Wan Changchun, Yang Rongli, Li Shuangping, Kan Xiaoyong, Gao Quanfu, Mingdao, and underground Catholic bishops Peter Shao Zhumin, James Su Zhimin, and Joseph Zhang Weizhu. Some have died in custody, such as Abidin Damollam.

USCIRF’s assessment is blunt: groups that refuse to submit to the government’s total control face widespread persecution. The commission emphasizes that state-controlled organizations are implementing sinicization through intrusive oversight, loyalty campaigns, and work plans that prioritize ideology over conscience.

Advice to Trump Admin

USCIRF recommends that the State Department redesignate China as a “country of particular concern.” China has received this designation nearly every year since 1999, and USCIRF urges renewing it to enable diplomatic measures, sanctions, and international pressure.

• – Sanction Chinese officials and entities responsible for severe violations of religious freedom
• – Work with international partners to address China’s use of technology and artificial intelligence to commit violations defined by the International Religious Freedom Act
• – Congressional steps to tighten restrictions on technologies that enable abuses and to ban paid lobbying in the United States by agents representing the Chinese government

According to USCIRF, the persecution of religious leaders in China is systematic. Torture and other abuses sit inside a broader architecture of surveillance, coercion, and ideological control. The commission urges renewed U.S. and international pressure, targeted sanctions, and stronger guardrails on technology that enables repression, with the aim of safeguarding freedom of religion or belief for all communities in China.