Beijing, July 27 (IANS) A pastor in China’s Xinjiang has been asked to follow regulations imposed by Communist officials and might face the shutdown of his church, according to a report.
The pastor, identified as “Pastor A” to protect his identity, is a member of the Uyghur ethnic group and leads a small house church in Xinjiang, The Western Journal reported, citing a release from International Christian Concern.
In the past few months, Communist officials have intensified pressure on the congregation, citing alleged violations linked to religious activities and enforcing new administrative demands which the church leaders have said they cannot follow.
The church needs to pay a “compliance deposit” and produce documents about its activities, according to the International Christian Concern. “Church leaders fear that failure to comply will result in the congregation’s permanent closure,” the report quoted it as saying.
The church will face possible closure if the authorities consider it non-compliant. Pastor A has claimed that his son was arrested and questioned about the church and later faced restrictions on movement, it added.
On July 21, over 50 Uyghur civil society organisations strongly condemned China’s Law on the Promotion of Ethnic Unity and Progress (Ethnic Unity Law), urging the international community to take meaningful action to repeal the legislation.
According to a joint statement, the law, which entered into force on July 1, 2026, is not a “technical administrative measure” but a “legislative instrument of forced assimilation”. It noted that the legislation explicitly conflates the Chinese nation with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and demands that ethnic groups abandon their distinct identities in favour of loyalty to the Party, the Han-defined “motherland”, and “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics”.
Under this framework, the organisations said, the Uyghur, Tibetan, Mongolian, and other non-Han identities are permitted to exist only insofar as they are absorbed into a single, CCP-defined Chinese nation.
“The law’s reach is sweeping. It entrenches Mandarin as the language of education, displacing Uyghur, Tibetan, and Southern Mongolian languages from the classroom and public life. It mandates the ‘sinicisation’ of religion, subordinating faith to Party ideology. It instructs parents and teachers to raise children in loyalty to the CCP rather than to their own culture, religion, or language,” the statement said.
“These are not incidental effects; they are the law’s stated purpose, and they build directly on policies that have already devastated our communities — mass internment, cultural and religious destruction, and the forced separation of children from their families,” it added.
The organisations expressed grave concerns over certain provisions in the law which stipulate that individuals and organisations outside mainland China who “undermine ethnic unity and progress” could be held legally responsible under Chinese law.
The organisations called on the UN human rights experts and mechanisms — including the Special Rapporteurs on freedom of religion or belief, and the situation of human rights defenders, on minority issues, as well as Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) and other relevant treaty bodies — to formally monitor and report on the implementation and extraterritorial application of the Ethnic Unity Law, and press Beijing to repeal it.
–IANS
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