Just before midnight on Jan. 7, legal scholar Benny Tai Yiu-ting solemnly walked out of the Ma On Shan police station in a black coat and a face mask to a scrum of reporters and flashing cameras. A day earlier, police had rounded up Tai and 52 other pro-democracy figures on suspicion of subversion in an early morning raid. Their crime: taking part in an unofficial primary election Tai had spearheaded.

Police released Tai, 56, on bail without charges after more than 30 hours of questioning. They barred him from leaving the city.

China has imprisoned more than 1 million people in its campaign against ethnic and religious minorities, according to U.S. officials and human rights organizations. On Tuesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Beijing has committed genocide and crimes against humanity in its repression of Uighur Muslims in the northwestern Xinjiang province.

North Korea has topped the list of worst countries for persecuted Christians for 20 straight years. Open Doors International released its 2021 World Watch List on Wednesday. The organization estimates that 1 in 8 Christians around the world lives in a country where they experience significant oppression.

A lie told once remains a lie, but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth. Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels gets attribution for that statement, which gave rise to the disinformation campaigns defining Nazi Germany and Communist Russia and China.

Spreading falsehoods to eliminate opponents is a strategy that’s alive and well around the globe. Ask Bob Fu. Over the past month, the underground church leader, who escaped China in the mid-1990s, has become the target of a disinformation campaign launched by a Chinese billionaire named Guo Wengui. 

On Sept. 5, Margaret Kimberley, editor and columnist of the far-left Black Agenda Report, tweeted to her 28,000 followers a screenshot of a headline comparing the conditions in China’s Xinjiang to Nazi Germany. She wrote: “These are lies. There is no evidence of Uighur ‘concentration camps.’ More hybrid war against China.” Two weeks later, she appeared at a talk with Green Party presidential candidate Howie Hawkins in the Bronx. 

Oct. 14 update

Protesters remained outside the Midland, Texas, home of Bob Fu 10 days after law enforcement placed Fu and his family in protective custody due to threats. The protesters carry signs claiming the founder of ChinaAid and pastor who once was forced out of China by its Chinese Communist Party (CCP) government is “a CCP spy.” They have refused to tell local media where they are from or whether they are being paid.

Teachers, students, and parents staged rare protests earlier this month in Inner Mongolia as the government began requiring schools to teach key subjects in Mandarin rather than the Mongolian language. Students will begin taking Chinese language classes one grade earlier and must use new Chinese textbooks for language and literature, morality and law, and history classes.