Pompeo, Lai press the need for new focus on religious freedom in Asia

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TOKYO — Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo lamented fraying religious freedoms in Asia, saying the issue required renewed international focus and that communist China was a primary obstacle to progress.

The two men, speaking separately, touched on many of the same themes Monday at the International Religious Freedom Summit Asia in Japan’s capital city. It was sponsored by organizations including Freedom House, the Family Research Council and The Washington Times Foundation.

Risks are rising in an era of “democratic backsliding” and “widespread aggression,” Mr. Lai told the conference in a video message. “We must reaffirm our commitment to freedom and dignity.”

Citing international democratic surveys, he noted that his island nation holds perfect scores for freedom of expression and freedom of belief. As “a beacon for religious freedom,” he said, Taiwan promotes “inclusiveness, religious diversity and interfaith dialogue.”

Mr. Pompeo, who was director of the CIA before moving to the State Department, noted bipartisan support for religious freedom abroad during the Trump administration. With faith deeply embedded in the human condition, he said, it is “indecent” of any government to try to suppress it.

“You have two different political parties and thought processes, but each believes deeply in the criticality of international religious freedoms,” he said. “It is not partisan in the U.S. It is something that is intrinsic to human dignity.”

Mr. Lai, who took office in May, said the bonds forged by 19th-century Christian pioneers who came to Taiwan on medical and evangelical missions remain strong. Religious institutions linked to their work conduct medical charity work and disaster relief locally and internationally.

Those ties also grant Taiwan’s government a rare set of relationships with international organizations, he said.

Across the Taiwan Strait, where China has long tried to diplomatically isolate the island democracy, religious freedom is in dire condition, Mr. Lai said. Summit attendees heard sobering accounts of how Beijing has destroyed places of worship in Tibet and Xinjiang, incarcerated devout believers in “reeducation” camps and placed children in “colonial boarding schools” designed to eradicate local belief systems and cultural traits.

Free to speak out

Mr. Pompeo, a former member of Congress now freed from the shackles of diplomatic protocol, took a take-no-prisoners approach to discuss the differences between China and Taiwan. Warning against living in a “fantasy world,” he insisted that Taiwan is de facto “a free, independent and sovereign nation.”

That wording is certain to infuriate Beijing, which considers the democratic island a renegade province of the mainland that will one day be under full Chinese control.

“It seems to be time to rip off the Band-Aids,” Mr. Pompeo said.

“It will make [Chinese President] Xi Jinping angry, and he will fly a bunch of planes and scream, but they did that yesterday and will do it tomorrow,” Mr. Pompeo said. “At the end of day, we have to acknowledge core truths.”

He advised against “kowtowing” to China when it threatens Taipei. Taiwan, he said, “poses zero threat to the people of mainland China.”

Accusing Beijing of running “a surveillance state that would make the Nazis blush,” Mr. Pompeo expressed regret that he was unable while in office to better defend the rights of the people in Hong Kong, another beacon of freedom in the region. The Chinese government has been aggressively rolling back civil liberties and other freedoms in the former British colony.

“We could have done better. The U.S. and Britain could have extended the time clock,” he acknowledged. “I take full responsibility for that. I think it was within our reach.”

Another failure was not holding Beijing accountable for the COVID-19 pandemic. Though he said he did not consider the coronavirus a biological weapon, his analysis, based on his position as CIA director, was that it was a lab leak from a Chinese research facility that was badly handled, contributing crucially to “one of the greatest acts of killing people in the world in modern times.”

Discussing his late-term decision as secretary of state to officially label China’s suppression of its Uyghur Muslim minority a “genocide,” he was more upbeat.

“There was a lot of hot debate inside the State Department” regarding “how we ought to proceed,” he said. “I thought we might have another four years to work on it, but we got fired.”

Mr. Pompeo noted with satisfaction that his successor at the State Department retained the blunt language about China after President Biden took office.

“I was very pleased that [Secretary of State Antony] Blinken concurred,” Mr. Pompeo said. “He confirmed it is indeed a genocide that is taking place there.”

Universal appeal

Mr. Pompeo said advancing religious freedom has universal appeal, even among those of different faiths. He recalled praise and not hostility from an audience in Cairo when he told his hosts he was an evangelical Christian and defended the universal right to practice one’s faith.

“They were Muslims, but they appreciated who I was and how I thought about the world,” he said. “Their line was, ‘We are very disciplined in our faith, and you are disciplined in yours, and we share the Abrahamic tradition.’”

Sometimes attacked by liberal media for his beliefs, Mr. Pompeo said that he was never bothered by the criticism but considered the attacks compliments.

He has held back from critiquing fellow believers he reckons have strayed from the path. Among them is the Vatican, which has accommodated Beijing’s demand for a major say in the leadership of the church in China to maintain a presence in the country.

“The day I came to Italy, the pope was out doing his hair,” he recalled with a chuckle. “He was not available.”

Mr. Pompeo said China presented a multifaceted economic and security challenge for U.S. policymakers, well beyond its refusal to recognize religious rights. He said he did not seek to “destroy China” but told the conference that Taiwan was a far more potent model for how a government should treat its people.

“We need the leadership to recognize what is in the best interests of its own people — not only economic freedoms but religious freedoms,” Mr. Pompeo said. “I am optimistic that we will get there one day. Taiwan is a model for what that looks like.”