Press Releases

As the world marks the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre on 4 June 1989, there will reportedly be no in-person vigil in Hong Kong for the first time since 1990. In June 1989, Chinese army troops brutally supressed peaceful protests for freedom and democracy, killing and wounding thousands of…

Chinese authorities have arrested a Vatican-appointed Catholic bishop, seven priests, and an unspecified number of seminarians in Hebei Province, according to a report from UCANews. The priests and seminarians were reportedly detained on 20 May for “allegedly violating the country’s repressive new regulations on religious affairs.” 63-year-old Bishop Joseph Zhang Weizhu…

Chinese pastor Yang Hua of Living Stone Church was attacked and beaten by a government official in a police station in Guiyang, Guizhou Province on 23 May. CSW has learned that the perpetrator of the attack was in plainclothes but claimed he represented the district level Committee of Political and…

CSW welcomes increased scrutiny of the grave human rights situation in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) at a high-level UN event, where UN Member States called for further engagement and action to end human rights violations. The event, which was sponsored by 18 UN Member States and other stakeholders, was…

Zhang Chunlei Zhang Chunlei, an elder of Love (Ren’ai) Reformed Church in Guiyang in China’s southwestern Guizhou province, has been officially arrested and accused of fraud after nearly seven weeks in detention. Mr Zhang was first placed under administrative detention for ‘illegally operating as an association’ on 16 March 2021. His detention…

New administrative measures on religious staff, released by China’s State Administration for Religious Affairs in February 2021, will come into effect on 1 May amid concerns from some religious leaders about their restrictive nature. One human rights lawyer described the measures as “one more weapon in [the Chinese authorities’] arsenal…

The wife of Chinese human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, who is believed to have been forcibly disappeared since August 2017, has called on the Chinese government to return his remains, as she believes he may have been “persecuted to death.” Gao Zhisheng is a Chinese human rights lawyer who was notable…

Zhang Chunlei, Credit: Facebook/Zhang Chunlei Zhang Chunlei, an elder of Love (Ren’ai) Reformed Church in Guiyang in China’s Guizhou province, has been placed in criminal detention after a police raid on 16 March 2021. On the morning of 16 March, local police and officials from the Religious Affairs Bureau stormed…

The charges against human rights lawyer Chang Weiping have been changed from ‘inciting subversion’ to ‘subversion’, it emerged last week. Both charges are frequently used to target human rights defenders in China. Chang Weiping has been in detention since 22 October 2020. Prior to his detention, he represented clients in…

Credit: REUTERS/Jason Lee The European Union (EU) is expected to apply sanctions later this month against four individuals and one entity in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in connection with human rights abuses against the Uyghur people. Diplomats speaking to the Wall Street Journal and EU Observer said the sanctions,…