China hits back at 'hypocritical' US over religious freedom

Beijing on Friday criticised US Vice President Mike Pence and top diplomat Mike Pompeo as "hideous" and "hypocritical" after they called for religious freedom in China at a major meeting in Washington.

Secretary of State Pompeo said Thursday that Washington will create a new international body to campaign for religious freedom, speaking after a conference where he called China's mass incarceration of mostly Muslim Uighurs "the stain of the century".

At a press briefing in Beijing on Friday, foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang rebuffed the criticism.

"The so-called conference on promoting religious freedom has slandered China's religious policies and the situation of religious belief in China and interfered with China's internal affairs," he said.

"The Chinese side is strongly dissatisfied with this and resolutely opposes it."
"We demand that the US abide by objective facts, abandon prejudice, correctly look at China's religious policies and the state of freedom of religious belief, and stop using religious issues to interfere in other countries' internal affairs."