WASHINGTON (Reuters) - China intensified its crackdown on some religious groups in 2001, using the war on terrorism to justify its actions against Muslim separatists in the Uighur ethnic minority, the United States said on Monday.
The State Department's annual global human rights report said particularly serious human rights abuses persisted in Tibet and in Xinjiang province in western China, where security was tightened considerably last year.
Muslim Uighur activists in Xinjiang had come under particular pressure, the report said. Beijing blames the small Uighur separatist movement for a spate of bombings and assassinations and says it is directly linked to Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in the September 11 attacks on America.
"A perceived opportunity to legitimise measures against Muslim Uighur activists under the antiterrorism umbrella led to an intensification of a crackdown in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of China late in the year," the report said.
Officials there have also restricted the building of mosques and initiated a campaign to discourage overt religious attire, including veils on Muslim women.
The United States has consistently criticized China's human rights record and particularly its intolerance of a broad range of religions. In a visit to China last month, President George W. Bush urged Beijing to expand religious freedoms, saying religion was not something to be feared.
The report highlighted China's "harsh and comprehensive" campaign against the Falun Gong spiritual group, which was banned in 1999, and said thousands of Falun Gong followers were serving sentences in labour camps.
There have been numerous credible reports of abuse and even killings of Falun Gong practitioners and torture using electric shock, the report said.
Various sources reported that since 1997, about 200 or more Falun Gong supporters had died while in police custody and that many of their bodies bore signs of severe beatings or torture or were cremated before relatives could examine them.
However, the number of protests by Falun Gong supporters in Tiananmen Square has decreased considerably, possibly following the self-immolation of five members of the group on January 23 of last year.
The authorities also continued a general crackdown on other groups considered to be "cults" while 14 unofficial Christian groups and a Buddhist organization known as Guanyin Famin were branded as "evil cults," the report said.