Christopher White is a pastor at Kedron United Church in Oshawa, Ont., And editor for Broadview magazine.

Margaret McCuaig-Johnston is a senior researcher at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa.

Canadians are now quite familiar with the many dimensions of the horrific repression of the Uyghur people in China’s Xinjiang region – including brainwashing, torture, rape, forced sterilization, and even deaths in the so-called re-education camps. And yet, organized churches in Canada have been strangely silent. Their voices in the face of persistent injustices against religious and cultural minorities in China are needed now.

The mass transport of Uyghurs to factories across China as forced labor involves all countries whose companies manufacture products there. Parliament unanimously recognized that these acts constitute genocide – and our government, acting with the US, UK and EU, has imposed sanctions on four senior officials and an infrastructure company implicated in the crackdown in Xinjiang.

Buddhists have experienced a similar crackdown in the country for decades. Practitioners of the Falun Gong spiritual movement are regularly imprisoned and often face torture and death under unthinkable circumstances. Muslims of the Hui ethnic group in China’s Gansu Province and the Ningxia region have seen the domes of mosques demolished and public use of Arabic script prohibited.

The measures are now spreading to other religions and cultures across the country in a campaign to “sinize” all aspects of religion, giving control to the state and the Communist Party. Passing religion on to anyone under the age of 18 is now prohibited, and formal education in minority languages ​​- the cultural glue of many religions – has been curtailed on the grounds that it is unconstitutional, leading to protests , teacher strikes and arrests in Inner Mongolia.

In addition to these injustices, people who run informal Christian “house churches” across China – Protestant and Catholic groups with a few members meeting at someone’s house – have been detained in “processing” facilities in basements without windows, ventilation or free time outdoors. Those who “don’t admit their mistakes” are held in solitary confinement – with the aim of making them renounce their faith. Christians are often held in these establishments for nine months or more, subjected to beatings and mental torture. Ministers of these house churches have been held without charge for up to ten years.

The so-called “official” Christian churches are allowed to exist for the moment in tolerance, but they too are undergoing changes imposed by the state. The authorities control the nominations, publications, finances and candidates for the seminar. Ministers walk on eggshells when it comes to what they are allowed to say, some inmates and accused with “incitement to subversion”. Crosses have been torn from churches, the Ten Commandments have been replaced with quotes from Chinese leader Xi Jinping, and photos of him have been strategically placed in religious shrines.

With mounting evidence regarding the repression of Uyghurs, the Canadian Muslim organization Justice for All Canada wrote a letter demanding action from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. It has been signed by individual Christian churches, but not by the Canadian Council of Churches, the Evangelical Alliance of Canada, or denominations such as the United Church, the Anglican Church, or the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops. The Vatican‘s limited role in China seems to come at the cost of silence in the face of human rights violations.

Organized churches in Canada are normally very engaged around issues of persecution and injustice, and now with Muslim and Christian religions affected, they have an important role to play in speaking out before their affiliated churches in China disappear. It is a discussion that every congregation across Canada should have. Keeping silent will not protect churches in China or encourage the Beijing regime to end its sinicization of religion. On the contrary, it allows them to move forward.

Churches should also join with the Muslim community in denouncing the Uyghur genocide. It is essential that all Canadians, including Christian organizations, speak out on behalf of our Muslim friends, families and neighbors. Taha Ghayyur, Executive Director of Justice for All Canada, argues that churches and religious institutions have a vital role as important allies in the fight to end the Uyghur genocide.

During the 1930s and 1940s, many Christians spoke up when there were disturbing stories about what Jews and others were going through in Nazi Germany. Other Christians have chosen to remain silent. In addition, churches have been silent for too many decades about the atrocities committed at residential schools in our own country. With the scary stories now coming from China, the choice of silence is the choice of supporting the oppressor.

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