Washington, USA - Ahead of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, a US government-appointed commission is calling for more international pressure China to end a "marked deterioration" in religious freedom.
"It is up to the US and its allies to vigorously advocate that China finally end the systematic and egregious human rights violations it may try to hide behind a facade of Olympic goodwill," Felice Gaer, the chairwoman of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, said Wednesday at a congressional hearing.
China slammed the commission's findings Thursday as "groundless" and an interference in domestic affairs.
Gaer spoke at an emotion-filled hearing in a Congressional room decked with an array of photos of key prisoners held in China for their religious activities and beliefs.
They included what is reputedly the world's youngest political prisoner -- a child chosen by the Dalai Lama, Tibet's highest-ranking spiritual leader, as his successor.
Gedhun Choekyi Nyima was six years old when he disappeared from public view in 1995 after being appointed by the Dalai Lama and is believed to have been under a form of house arrest ever since.
Among the other prisoners whose photos donned the packed hearing room were Bishop Su Zhimin, a prominent leader of the underground Roman Catholic Church jailed about a decade ago but whose whereabouts are uncertain, as well as house church pastor Wang Zaiqing, imprisoned for printing and distributing the Bible.
"In this hearing today, I want to emphasize very clearly that the policies of the Chinese government are not abstract issues of international law," Gaer said. "They have a human face."
Gaer's non-partisan commission is appointed by the US president and leaders of Congress to research the status of religious liberty and to provide reports and recommendations to the government and legislators.
She said the Chinese legal system did not protect those whose religious practice is, according to Chinese law, classified as "abnormal", "illegal religious activity" or as "evil cults."
"In the year before the Beijing Olympics, Chinese authorities have raised the stakes -- drawing a line between 'normal' religious activity and 'illegal' religious activity," she said. "Those not deemed 'normal' face continued pressure, harassment and arrest."
Gaer wanted religious freedom to be given priority along with trade and security under the US-China "strategic dialogue" and urged Congress to seek oversight of the discussions to set "concrete, transparent benchmarks."
In Beijing, foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said the commission "has again made a groundless attack ... on the religious and human rights situation in China."
Jiang accused the commission of interfering in China's internal affairs.
"We urge this commission to recognise China's real situation on freedom of religious belief and stop interfering into China's internal affairs," Jiang said at a regular news briefing.
"Chinese citizens enjoy broad and full freedom of religious belief that is recognised by all."
The US State Department has included China on its list of "severe" religious freedom violators for the past seven years.
Joseph Kung, who heads Cardinal Kung Foundation, a US-based human rights group, told the hearing Wednesday that about 40 underground bishops in China had been arrested, jailed, gone into hiding or "simply have disappeared."
"The open persecution of peaceful religious believers by an Olympic host country makes a mockery of this goal of the Olympic movement," he said.
Bhuchung Tsering, vice president of the International Campaign for Tibet, called for the immediate and unconditional release of all Tibetan religious prisoners of conscience.
He said the plight of Gedhun Choekyi Nyima was "reflective of the nature of China's trampling of Tibetan religious freedom."
Beijing has appointed another boy as its choice of Panchen Lama, Gyaltsen Norbu, apparently to eventually replace the elderly Dalai Lama, who fled to India in 1959 after an aborted uprising against Chinese rule.
Erping Zhang, the executive director of Association for Asian Research, said there had been reports of US practitioners of the Chinese Falungong spiritual movement "being followed, monitored, and even physically attacked by agents of China."
He cited the case of a 38-year-old Falungong practitioner and staffer with the US-based Asia Foundation who was sentenced recently by the Chinese authorities to two and a half years of forced labor after he urged the Chinese authorities to reevaluate a ban on the Falungong sect.
A Canadian study released Wednesday said China's military reportedly harvested organs from prison inmates, mostly Falungong practitioners, for large-scale transplants on patients, including foreigners.