As most of you know President Obama has been on a tour lately, and one of the nations he has visited was China. Many of us who look at persecution issues and religious freedom have been wondering what the outcome of President Obama's visit to China would be, since China has some very bad policies with human rights. Today, Mission Network News is reporting the following:
China (MNN) ― Religious freedom advocates are pleased following President Barak Obama's visit with Chinese President Hu Jintao, who spoke out about the need for religious freedom in China. President Obama also emphasized the importance of freedom of information in a question-and-answer session with college students in Shanghai.
Todd Nettleton with Voice of the Martyrs says this is good news. However, this may be a change in policy for the Obama administration. Nettleton says Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made conflicting remarks on her recent visit to China. She said, "We wouldn't be holding China accountable on the issue of religious freedom, or human rights issues. There were more important things like trade and global warming and those types of things."
Nettleton says it's hard to know where the administration stands on the issue. Nettleton says it's also interesting that President Obama made these comments in Shanghai, "which, just within the week before he was there, had just closed down a large house church. Some of the members of the church have been literally hunted down to try to get them off the street and make sure there wasn't any kind of public spectacle while Obama was there."
While Nettleton is grateful to President Obama for his remarks and keeping the discussion on the table, "When push comes to shove, [the United States owes] the Chinese government and the Chinese people a huge amount of money, so it's very hard for us to put any teeth with our proclamation about human rights and religious freedom."
