Eye for an eye: China bans US religious leader as payback for sanction over Falun Gong detention

China sanctions Johnnie Moore and his family for ‘promoting cults’ and because of America’s ‘blatant efforts to promote heretical religions’

It comes two weeks after US Secretary of State announced the sanctioning of a Chinese official for arbitrary detention because of spiritual belief

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Reverend Johnnie Moore of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom has been sanctioned by the Chinese government. Photo: Getty Images

Published: 9:30pm, 26 May 2021Updated: 10:55pm, 26 May 2021

A US religious official was sanctioned by China on Wednesday for “promoting cults” in retaliation for an earlier United States sanction on a Chinese official over religious freedom.

Johnnie Moore, a US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) commissioner, and his family members will be denied entry to the Chinese mainland as well as Hong Kong and Macau, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a regular press conference on Wednesday

The decision was “in response to the US side’s blatant efforts to promote heretical religions and impose unilateral sanctions on Chinese personnel based on lies and false information”, Zhao said.

Moore, an evangelical leader and public relations businessman, had recommended through the USCIRF that the US Department of State continue to designate China a “country of particular concern”. In December, he announced his adoption of Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai Chee-ying through the commission’s Religious Prisoners of Conscience Project.

The US Department of State issued the 2020 “International Religious Freedom Report” this month, including accusations against Beijing of suppressing Christians, Uygur Muslims and Tibetan Buddhists.

In marking the release of the report Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the sanction against Chinese Communist Party official Yu Hui, who was accused of suppressing Falun Gong practitioners. Falun Gong was founded in 1992 and banned in China as an “evil cult” in 1999.

“He is designated for his involvement in gross violations of human rights, namely the arbitrary detention of Falun Gong practitioners for their spiritual beliefs,” Blinken said.