The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is attempting to remake religious belief in its own image, according to a new report. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) published a report last week addressing the “sinicization of religion” policy enforced by the CCP, which includes mass arrests and the removal of religious imagery from churches.

“Sinicization, or the complete subordination of religious groups to the CCP’s political agenda and Marxist vision for religion, has become the core driving principle of the government’s management of religious affairs,” the report states. “Through regulations and state-controlled religious organizations, authorities incorporate CCP ideology into every facet of religious life for Buddhists, Catholic and Protestant Christians, Muslims, and Taoists. They also forcibly eradicate religious elements considered contradictory to the CCP’s political and policy agenda with ultranationalist overtones.”

“Sinicization is a political indoctrination process that embeds the CCP and its political ideology into every aspect of religious life, from the religious beliefs themselves to the physical structure of places of worship,” the report explains. It continues, “The goal of sinicization is to turn religious adherents and institutions into perfect vessels of the CCP, root out all perceived non-CCP influences — which the government often disparages as ‘foreign’ — and subdue ethnic minority communities through forced assimilation.” The report goes on to say:

“Overall, sinicization demands unequivocal loyalty to the CCP, including wholehearted acceptance of the CCP’s conceptualizations of patriotism, national unity, the Chinese nation, the Chinese motherland, religion and socialism with Chinese characteristics, and Chinese culture. These ideological principles guide the state’s approach to enforcing sinicization, resulting in severe repression and gross religious freedom violations for religious groups and individuals who neither espouse nor embody CCP ideology.”

The report says that the CCP’s “sinicization” policy is an “attempt to exert total control over religion through an extensive, complicated web of state laws, regulations, and policies that the CCP and various government agencies enforce.” The government has established a series of CCP-controlled “patriotic religious associations” — such as the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA), the Bishops’ Conference of the Catholic Church in China (BCCCC), the Protestant Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM), and China Christian Council (CCC), among others — and persecutes those who practice their faith outside of these sanctioned organizations.

The China Anti-Cult Association and the Ministry of Public Security work together to target religious groups, churches, congregations, parishes, and ministers who do not register with the official government-approved religious organizations, often resulting in mass arrests, imprisonment, and anti-cult measures to “deprogram” practitioners.

According to USCIRF, the CCP has forcibly removed crosses from churches, replaced images of Christ or the Blessed Virgin Mary with images of Chinese President and CCP leader Xi Jinping, required churches to display CCP slogans at entrances and exits, “censored religious texts” and “imposed CCP-approved religious materials” on Christians, and ordered clergy and ministers to preach CCP propaganda. Christians who do not recognize the authority of the state-approved “patriotic religious associations” and worship “underground” are detained, arrested, incarcerated, and in some cases “disappeared.”

Other religious groups are also persecuted. Muslim Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples in China have faced extermination and have been placed in political reeducation camps, where they have been tortured and raped and subjected to forced sterilization and forced abortion. The report notes that CCP authorities “have committed genocide and crimes against humanity” against Muslim “under the guise of sinicization and combating ‘religious extremism, terrorism, and separatism.’”

Tibetan Buddhists have been subjected to political reeducation programs, their monasteries have been taken over by CCP authorities, and their religious customs and rituals have been suppressed or banned. The CCP has also arrested and tortured Tibetan Buddhists for owning images of the Dalai Lama, talking about him, or even praying for him. Even “perceived traditional and majority ethnic Han Chinese religious groups like Chinese Buddhists and Taoists” have faced persecution, with the CCP destroying temples, installing party propaganda on temple grounds, and removing or destroying religious imagery.

“Sinicization entrenches the CCP’s control and its vision for the modern Chinese state into every aspect of religious life by forcing groups from the five officially recognized religions to conform their beliefs, activities, expression, attire, leadership, language, houses of worship, and more to CCP ideology,” USCIRF concludes. “Enforcement of such sinicization policies has consistently resulted in systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom and related human rights, including genocide, crimes against humanity, mass incarceration, enforced disappearances, and the destruction of cultural and religious heritage.”