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UNITED STATES COMMISSION ON

INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

HEARING

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN SOUTHEAST ASIA:

TECHNO-AUTHORITARIANISM AND

TRANSNATIONAL INFLUENCES

Thursday, January 25, 2024

3:30 p.m., ET
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Virtual Hearing
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P A R T I C I P A N T S

USCIRF COMMISSIONERS PRESENT:

Abraham Cooper, Chair

Frederick A. Davie, Vice Chair

David Curry

Susie Gelman

Stephen Schneck

Nury Turkel

Frank Wolf
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C O N T E N T S

 PAGE

Opening Remarks:

Abraham Cooper, Chair, USCIRF 4

Frederick A. Davie, Vice Chair, USCIRF 7

Stephen Schneck, Commissioner, USCIRF 9 

Pre-Recorded Remarks:

Rep. Mike Gallagher [R-WI]

Chairman, House Select Committee on the

 Chinese Communist Party 11

Rep. Ted Lieu [D-CA] 15 

 

Panel I: 17 

Kirril Shields, Ph.D.

Program Manager

Asia-Pacific Centre for the

 Responsibility to Protect 18 

Michelle Lee

Graduate Researcher

Columbia University 27

Panel II: 30 

Rana S. Inboden, Ph.D.

Senior Fellow with the 

 Robert S. Strauss Center

for International Security and Law

University of Texas at Austin 33

James Chin, Ph.D.

Professor of Asian Studies

University of Tasmania 38

Andrew Khoo

Co-Chair, Constitutional Law Committee

Bar Council Malaysia 53
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Q&A 61

Adjourn 87
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P R O C E E D I N G S

CHAIR COOPER: Good afternoon and welcome 

to the U.S. Commission on International Religious 

Freedom’s hearing on Religious Freedom in Southeast 

Asia: Techno-Authoritarianism and Transnational 

Influences.

Thank you very much to our distinguished 

witnesses for taking the time to join us today to 

offer their invaluable insights on these important 

topics.

The U.S. Commission on International 

Religious Freedom, or USCIRF, is an independent, 

bipartisan U.S. government advisory bo dy created by 

the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act, or 

IRFA.

The Commission uses international 

standards to monitor freedom of religion or belief 

abroad and makes policy recommendations to the U.S. 

government.

Today, USCIRF exercises its statutory 

authority under IRFA to convene this important 
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virtual hearing.

In today’s hearing, we’ll look at how 

emerging trends in technology and influences from 

outside the region are impacting religious freedom 

in member states of the Association of Southeastern 

Asian Nations, or ASEAN.

We will also consider how the U.S. 

government can more effectively combat repressive 

transnational influence that seeks to destroy 

religious freedom and other related human rights.

Despite growing civil society activism and 

economic development, religious freedom conditions 

throughout Southeast Asia continue to stagnate or, 

worse, in many places to decline.

The rise of technology and digital 

surveillance alongside other transnational 

influences from outside the region place religious 

freedom under increasing threat.

The Burmese military disseminates hate 

speech and calls for widespread violence through 

social media to perpetrate atrocities against the 
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predominantly Muslim Rohingya.

In Indonesia, blasphemy charges 

increasingly cite social media as a source of the 

offending incident.

Across Southeast Asia, transnational 

influences, particularly from China and Saudi 

Arabia, threaten to change the political and legal 

landscape with major consequences for religious 

freedom and other related core human rights.

In last year’s Annual Report, USCIRF 

recommended that the United States Department of 

State designate Burma and Vietnam as Countries of 

Particular Concern, or CPCs, for engaging in 

systematic, ongoing, egregious violations of 

religious freedom.

We also recommended that Indonesia and 

Malaysia be placed on the State Department’s 

Special Watch List for engaging in or tolerating 

severe violations of religious freedom.

The State Department has designated Burma 

as a CPC and placed Vietnam on the Special Watch 
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List but has not taken similar action on either 

Indonesia or Malaysia.

It’s now my honor to hand over to my 

colleague, Vice Chair Fred Davie, for his opening 

remarks.

VICE CHAIR DAVIE: Thank you, Chair 

Cooper.

As our chair mentioned, religious freedom

conditions throughout Asia continue to stagnate or 

decline. As USCIRF’s reporting highlights, 

blasphemy charges remain widespread in Indonesia 

and Malaysia.

Restrictive legal codes such as Brunei’s 

Shari’a Penal Code and the recently passed 

Indonesian Criminal Code further criminalize 

blasphemy and restrict religious freedom.

They do so, in part, through the laws and 

practices that permit digital surveillance. The 

bureaucratic regulation of religion by nations in 

ASEAN has brought matters of faith into the domain 

of official government policy.
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Governments are increasingly using 

technology to interfere with individuals’ lives to 

enforce laws that regulate religious practice.

In some places, such as Malaysia, it is no 

longer an individual’s choice to determine their 

faith identity or to convert to a religion or 

belief, to dress according to their conscience, to 

marry across religious lines, and so on. 

These are now administrative issues 

requiring approval from a government agency. To 

defend these practices from international scrutiny, 

ASEAN members increasingly manipulate human rights 

language in the name of preserving their cultural 

identity. 

As it well documented, the most egregious 

atrocities in the region have been committed by the 

Burmese military against the predominantly Muslim 

Rohingya. 

Burmese authorities’ use of technology to 

target Rohingya led, in part, to the explosion of 

violence and genocide in 2017.
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These actions sent millions of refugees 

throughout the wider region threatening economic 

and social stability of host countries who had 

nothing to do with the atrocities perpetrated in 

Burma.

Religious freedom violations in one 

country, if left unchanged, can threaten the 

stability and development of neighboring countries.

I look forward to hearing from our 

witnesses today, and I will now pass the floor over 

to Commissioner Stephen Schneck for his remarks.

Commissioner Schneck.

COMMISSIONER SCHNECK: Thank you, Vice 

Chair Davie.

I’d like to join in welcoming everyone to 

today’s hearing.

As has been mentioned by my colleagues, 

ASEAN countries are increasingly using new 

technologies to bolster authoritarian practices and 

to consolidate power, often at the expense of 

religious minorities and religious expression.
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Unfortunately, powerful countries have 

pioneered and perfected these kinds of 

authoritarian practices and are now using their 

weight and influence to see these practices 

replicated throughout Southeast Asia.

For example, the Chinese government is a 

leading player in implementing and promoting 

techno-authoritarianism at home and abroad. 

Domestically, Chinese authorities have 

aggressively used so-called “smart city” 

technologies, including artificial intelligence, 

AI, big data, biometric collection, and facial, 

voice and gait recognition, all to carry out mass 

surveillance.

They target Christians, Falun Gong 

practitioners, and ethno-religious groups like 

Uyghurs and Tibetans.

The government exports its “smart city” 

technologies and underlying techno-authoritarian 

approach to Southeast Asia and around the world.

I very much look forward to hearing from 
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our witnesses today, and with that, I pass the 

floor back to Chair Cooper.

VICE CHAIR DAVIE: Chair, you are muted.

CHAIR COOPER: Thank you, Commissioner 

Schneck.

Before we move to our first panel, we will 

now have some opening remarks from United States 

Representative Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, who is 

the chairman of the House Select Committee on the 

Chinese Communist Party.

MR. GALLAGHER: [Pre-recorded remarks.] 

Hi. I’m Mike Gallagher, and I represent 

Wisconsin’s great 8t h District in Congress where I 

chair the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist 

Party.

Thank you to USCIRF for inviting me to 

speak and for holding such an important hearing on 

how strategies and tactics from the CCP’s brutal 

war on religion are increasingly being used to 

restrict religious practice throughout Southeast 

Asia.
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I’m sorry I couldn’t be there to join you 

in person, but I wanted to share some insights from 

our work on the faithful who are in crisis inside 

China.

The Chinese Communist Party is rewriting 

the Bible. In the Gospel of John, Jesus famously 

defends a woman caught committing adultery against 

her accusers, saying “let he among you without sin 

cast the first stone.”

The chastened accusers slink away, and 

Jesus says to the woman, “has no long condemned 

you? Then neither do I condemn you. Go forth and 

sin no more.”

It’s a beautiful story of forgiveness and 

mercy unless, of course, you’re a CCP official. 

Then it’s a story about a dissident challenging the 

authority of the state. 

A possible sneak preview of what a Bible 

with socialist characteristics might look like 

appeared in a Chinese university textbook in 2020.

The rewritten excerpt from the Gospel of 
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John ends not with mercy but with Jesus himself 

stoning the adulterous woman to death.

Across Henan Province, local CCP officials 

forced Protestant churches to replace the Ten 

Commandants with Xi Jinping quotes. “Thou shalt 

have no other gods before” me became diktats like 

“resolutely guard against the infiltration of 

Western ideology.”

At the 19t h Party Congress, Chairman Xi 

declared we will insist on the Sinicization of 

Chinese religions and provide active guidance for 

religion and socialism to coexist.

Let me translate. Xi Jinping has no 

problem with the first commandment, just so long as 

he and the CCP are playing the role of God. This 

is how the Chinese Communist Party operates. Faced 

with a force too powerful to destroy, belief in 

God, they pivoted to a more insidious and more 

dangerous tactic: cooptation, or, as Chairman Xi 

calls it, the Sinicization of Chinese religions.

Instead of destroying it, the CCP has 
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decided to harness religion as a tool to control 

people’s minds. 

CCTV cameras have been placed in houses of 

worship, letting the faithful know their every word 

is being monitored.

The CCP has also seized control of the 

selection of religious leaders and throws anyone 

opposed in jail. 

Through a secret 2018 deal with the Pope, 

the CCP even managed to control the nomination of 

Catholic bishops, and it seeks to coerce Tibetan 

Buddhists into accepting the CCP’s choice of 

successor to the Dalai Lama.

The CCP does not believe in individual 

dignity. They reject the inherent worth and 

preciousness of each individual. They do not

believe men and women are made in the image of God.

For the CCP, humans are material objects 

to be used for whatever purposes the Party deems 

appropriate.

The problem for the Party, as the pastor 
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of one Chinese church stated, is that in this war, 

in Xinjiang, in Shanghai, in Beijing, and Chengdu, 

the rulers have chosen an enemy that can never be 

imprisoned—the soul of man—and they are doomed to 

lose. That is an assessment that we must make come 

true.

CHAIR COOPER: Thank you, Chair Gallagher, 

for those stirring remarks.

I would like now to introduce U.S. 

Representative from California, Ted Lieu, who will 

provide additional remarks.

MR. LIEU: [Pre-recorded remarks.]

Hello. I’m Congressman Ted Lieu, and I 

represent the 36t h Congressional District of 

California in the U.S. House of Representatives.

I want to thank the U.S. Commission on 

International Religious Freedom for inviting me to 

speak on such an important topic.

Religious freedom is one of the founding 

tenets of America and one of the primary reasons 

why so many immigrated to this great land.
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Over the centuries, many governments have 

made significant strides towards allowing more 

religious freedoms for their people, but the fight 

for these freedoms is certainly not over.

Citizens in Southeast Asian countries and 

around the world are endeavoring to implement their 

own democratic values and, accordingly, we are 

seeing more and more people around the world speak 

out about the importance of religious freedom and 

the right to worship faiths of their choosing.

At the same time, we have seen 

authoritarianism and religious intolerance target 

religious minorities in countries like Myanmar and 

elsewhere.

Democracies like the United States have a 

responsibility to remain diligent in working to 

ensure that governments are not targeting religious 

minorities, particularly by using advances in 

technology to monitor their citizens.

Though the United States was founded on 

religious freedom, we’re not immune from a rising 
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tide of intolerance. Now more than ever we must be 

vigilant and fight back against hate speech.

We have seen an unacceptable increase in 

hate speech on the Internet and correlating 

violence against religious and ethnic minorities.

We must continue to shine a light on the 

darkness that is religious intolerance both at home 

and abroad.

I want to thank the U.S. Commission on 

International Religious Freedom again for your 

invaluable work in this important field and the 

panelists for their participation in this 

discussion.

CHAIR COOPER: Thank you, Representative 

Lieu.

I will now introduce our first 

distinguished panel of witnesses. After the 

witnesses in the first panel speak, we will go 

directly into the statements from the witnesses on 

Panel II.

Following their testimony, our 
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commissioners will have the opportunity to ask 

questions and receive comments from all the 

witnesses.

For our first distinguished panel, we will 

focus on techno-authoritarianism, including the use 

of social media and technology, to perpetrate 

religious freedom violations.

To discuss this topic, our first witness 

is Dr. Kirril Shields, a Program Manger from the 

Australia-based Asia-Pacific Centre for the 

Responsibility to Protect; and Michelle Lee, a 

graduate researcher currently at Columbia 

University.

You should take the time to read their 

full witness bios by clicking on the link in the 

Chat.

Thank you, all of you, for testifying, and 

Dr. Shields, if you would begin.

DR. SHIELDS: Good morning, everyone. 

Thank you very much, Chair Cooper.

I wish to start by just paying my respects 
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to the traditional elders, past, present and 

emerging, of the land on which I sit.

And I’m going to be using the technology.

Please let me know if it doesn’t work, and let me 

just swap screens. 

Again, good morning, Chairman Gallagher, 

Chair Cooper, Vice Chair Davie, Commissioner 

Schneck, and members of the Commission.

First, I wish to thank you and your 

organization for this timely hearing and for 

inviting me to speak today on the complexities and 

the difficulties associated with the rights to 

religious freedom in Southeast Asia, and trends on 

the digital sphere that might inhibit this freedom —

a topic that we at the Centre here are deeply 

concerned about.

And I speak today as a staff member of the 

Asia-Pacific-Centre for the Responsibility to 

Protect, which is a bit of mouthful, otherwise 

known as the APR2P Centre, which was established 14 

years ago, and we work to mitigate the risks of 
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atrocity crime and mass human rights violations in 

the Asia Pacific region.

In doing so, we work across three sectors: 

first, within the academic space, which is given 

over to research and to teaching here at the 

University of Queensland; second, with governments, 

as our centre is largely funded by the Department 

of Foreign Affairs and Trade; and, thirdly, we work 

with grassroots CSOs and NGOs across the region, 

including a cohort of 36 organizations, which we 

group under the banner of the Asia-Pacific 

Partnership for Atrocity Prevention, another long -

winded title, otherwise known as APPAP, and we work 

towards atrocity prevention via initiatives within 

communities.

And this includes collecting evidence of 

sexual and gender-based violence against Rohingya 

women in the camps and surrounding communities in 

Cox’s Bazar, using technology to help migrant 

communities in Malaysia to report hate crime, and 

working with the organizations to influence policy 
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amongst ASEAN and ASEAN member states.

I note each of these approaches as each 

speaks to the topic of today’s commission, techno -

authoritarianism in Southeast Asia and its sway 

over religious leaders and religious freedom.

Each of these sectors, from the academic 

through to the grassroot approaches, through to 

policy advice at the ASEAN level, have all had to 

consider this new and ever-escalating phenomenon.

Today, I wish to make two points, just two 

points, in relation to the topic of religious 

freedom and the digital sphere in our region.

First, I wish to highlight the region’s 

habit of irresponsibility and the digital world, 

and the effect of irresponsibility on religious 

freedom.

And, second, I wish to state the 

opportunity of Congress and the current 

Administration to promote religious freedom via 

engagement in the region.

At the core of our Centre’s work is the 
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promotion of responsibility. That is a 

responsibility to protect people from becoming 

victims of atrocity crimes—genocide, crimes against 

humanity, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing.

And while I’m not going to talk on the 

specifics of R2P as a norm and as a means of 

encouraging state responsibility, what I do wish to 

signal is the current malaise in the region around 

notions of responsibility in relation to the 

digital world. Namely, the question is who is 

responsible?

If, for example, Facebook has been cited 

as a platform that has been used to incite 

genocide, as was noted in the UN’s 2018 Report of 

the Independent Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, 

who then is responsible for the content?

Is it the company, the user; is it ASEAN? 

Is it domestic legislation? Is it the UN and its 

various offices? Or is it regional and global 

governments who might have influence on either the 

country committing the crimes or on the platform 
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that allows this incitement to incur?

Unfortunately, given the lack of 

regulation across Southeast Asia, coupled with 

ASEAN’s policy of non-interference in the politics 

of state—an example is the current crisis in 

Myanmar—this idea of responsibility is often 

overshadowed by a proliferation of irresponsibility 

that allows both legitimate and illegitimate 

governments, such as the junta in Myanmar, to use 

the digital sphere for political gain.

And this is often coupled with the 

religious agenda, especially when governments are 

backed by conservative and hard-line contingents of 

religious followers and their leaders.

Problems occur when religion becomes 

state-sponsored and has an accompanying political 

motivation, or leaders of a religion are seen to

have gained politically by endorsing religious 

practices that influence a nation’s politics.

And here I cite, as you as well have 

cited, the growing trend in Malaysia towards state 
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adherence to conservative Islam.

And the digital world from social media to 

the current employment and development of 

artificial intelligence is a core facilitator in 

promoting and propagating a politic that 

preferences one religion over other beliefs and 

practices.

Technology is being employed by religious 

leaders and their followers to promote religious 

intolerance, leading, as already noted in some 

cases, a delegitimization of belief systems by 

propaganda of hate-filled myth and disinformation.

And this leads me to my second point, 

hand-in hand is noted a rise in frustration across 

civil society, governments, academia, and 

intergovernmental organizations alike, that would 

like regulation and ruling akin to that being 

utilized in Europe by the EU or by the European 

Council over religious tolerance and its ties to 

hate speech and disinformation within the digital 

sphere.
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This frustration is only expounded by 

social media’s inertia to intervene, with decisions 

seemingly based not on responsible governance but 

due to economic benefit.

This frustration is also noted by peoples 

living in conflict-affected areas who see little to 

no response to religious restrictions and the 

subsequent political and social implications, from 

the international community alongside the ASEAN 

community.

This includes frustration at ASEAN’s 

ineffective five-point consensus plan for Myanmar 

that fails to address core problems, including a 

means of mitigating the regional risks of promoting 

one religion over others via social media, and 

therefore heightening intolerance and risking 

inciting violence.

This frustration also stems from social 

media’s small and seemingly tokenistic approach to 

mitigating problems associated with religious 

intolerance, especially when these are coupled with 
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a political agenda, only made worse by the recent 

takeover of Twitter where content appears less 

regulated than ever.

As a result of this, and I was asked to 

make some recommendations, I’ve divided the 

recommendations between the President and his 

administration and for Congress.

I have three recommendations for each. To 

the Biden Administration, the first recommendation 

is to question social media companies over their 

role in inciting religious hatred, both within 

countries and regions that are already conflict 

affected, such as Myanmar and West Papua, but also 

within the broader Southeast Asia region.

The second recommendation is to encourage 

a more proactive ASEAN that looks to models such as 

the European Union’s legislation on social media 

and AI, to grow and foster religious tolerance via 

the development and adoption of regional laws and 

an ASEAN jurisdiction.

And three, to work with ASEAN and the 
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ASEAN Secretary General to develop educational 

programs that foster religious tolerance throughout 

the region.

And to U.S. Congress, just to finish, my 

three recommendations are to increase funding the 

Southeast Asian civil society organizations to 

provide education on how social media works.

The second recommendation is to bring the 

topic of Southeast Asia to Congress and to 

congressional hearings that question the role of 

social media.

And the third point is to expand the U.S. 

State Department’s Atrocity Prevention Education 

Program to incorporate Southeast Asian government 

officials and to also include a module in the 

course on how the digital world spreads hate and 

disinformation that reduces religious freedom.

And this initiative can be seen to respond 

to your Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities 

Prevention Act.

With this, I once again wish to thank the 
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Commission for the ability to talk today and look 

forward to the other speakers and the other expert 

witnesses.

VICE CHAIR DAVIE: Chair Cooper. 

Thank you.

CHAIR COOPER: Thank you, Dr. Shields, for 

that informative and provocative presentation.

We now turn to Michelle Lee. Ms. Lee, we 

look forward to hear your report.

MS. LEE: Hello.

Chairman Cooper, Vice Chair Davie, and 

the members of the Commission, thank you for the 

opportunity to testify today about the pressing 

religious freedom conditions in Myanmar.

I am Michelle Lee and my research focuses 

largely on documenting state-sponsored attacks on 

the Rohingya community.

I will start with a brief overview on the 

Rohingya refugee crisis and its history.

The crisis involving the Rohingyas, a 

predominantly Muslim group in Myanmar, is an urgent 
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call to action for the global community.

In 2017, the brutal campaigns led by the 

Myanmar military against the Rohingya triggered a 

massive humanitarian crisis resulting in a vast 

exodus to Bangladesh’s refugee camps, which have 

now become the largest in the world.

The United Nations has called this crisis 

a textbook example of ethnic cleansing. As of 

today, more than 960,000 Rohingya population is in 

need of urgent assistance.

They face severe shortages in basic needs. 

Over 70 percent lack safe water and sanitation, and 

only two percent of Rohingya women give birth in 

hospitals.

Despite their generational presence in 

Myanmar, the Rohingyas are denied a citizenship 

through systematic exclusion.

The government bans the term “Rohingya” 

and views them as illegal immigrants and as a 

national threat.

The presumed goal behind the military 
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group, also known as Tatmadaw, is to help the 

military preserve power and rally nationalistic 

support by inflaming ethno-religious strife.

The Tatmadaw has weaponized social media 

in their campaigns, transforming these platforms 

into battlefields.

In 2018, Facebook uncovered concrete 

evidence of such misuse, and the UN has also 

identified these online operations as systematic 

and orchestrated attacks against the Rohingyas. 

The Tatmadaw’s online operations are a 

calculated psychological warfare aimed at 

instilling pervasive fear among civilians while 

garnering support for military actions.

In 2017, Tatmadaw spread fake news on 

Facebook to both Rohingya and Buddhist groups that 

an attack from the other side was imminent. These 

fear-mongering tactics forced them to vigilantly 

observe and distrust each other, deepening the 

divide between them. The consequences were 

devastating. 
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In 2018, nearly 700,000 Rohingyas were 

forced to flee to Bangladesh in terror.

Rohingyas are required to register for a 

digitalized National Verification Card that 

identifies them as foreigners, a tactic similar to 

the digital surveillance method used against the 

Uyghur community in Xinjiang, China.

Additionally, the Tatmadaw also uses 

drones and phone-cracking devices to monitor the 

Rohingyas. These tools allowing for illicit real -

time tracking and eavesdropping mirror Chinese 

techniques like biometric scanning, phone-tracking 

apps, surveillance cameras, all contributing to 

what many describe as an open air prison.

The Chinese Communist Party, also known as 

CCP’s great economic interest in Myanmar, 

particularly as a gateway to the Indian Ocean and 

strategic trade routes, has emboldened the Myanmar 

military.

The atrocities in Xinjiang and Rakhine 

State reveals a disturbing pattern, a shared 
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strategy by the CCP to systematically target Muslim 

minorities employing trial and error surveillance 

tactics.

The plight of the Rohingya is not just 

Myanmar’s issue. It’s a vivid example of regional 

power dynamics with global implications.

The systematic repressions seen in both 

regions, fueled by advanced digital surveillance 

technology, is indicative of a broader shift 

towards techno-authoritarianism with significant 

transnational influences.

Despite heightened international aid and 

attention, the Myanmar military accelerated its 

state-sponsored ethnic cleansing operations against 

the Rohingyas, showing little response to 

international pressure.

In light of these developments, I propose 

the following recommendations to the U.S. 

government:

First, the U.S. should actively pursue 

open dialogue with CCP to join broader 
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international aid efforts addressing the Rohingya 

refugee crisis.

This approach could apply pressure on the 

Myanmar military to move towards peaceful 

resolution and reform.

Second, due to the challenge of assessing 

restricted regions like China and Myanmar, it is 

crucial to thoroughly document human rights 

violations using advanced technology and artificial 

intelligence, using satellite imagery, photographs, 

videos, and social media.

However, this strategy carries risk for 

reporters and informants and must be approached 

with caution.

Third, we must advocate for the 

fundamental rights for the Rohingya, including 

citizenship, freedom of movement, and access to 

livelihoods, alongside a wide plan for humanitarian 

aid in Rakhine State.

And, in closing, I want to thank the 

committee for your commitment to these vital 
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issues. Crimes against humanity cannot be treated 

merely as an area of disengagement or disagreement.

Genocide by its very definition is an international 

crime and it demands active global engagement and 

resolution.

CHAIR COOPER: Thank you, Ms. Lee, for 

that sobering presentation.

Commissioners will have an opportunity at 

the end of the second panel to ask questions of all 

of our experts.

We now turn to our second panel which 

we’ll hear about transnational influences from 

outside ASEAN that are adversely affecting 

religious freedom in member states.

Our first witness on this panel is Dr. 

Rana S. Inboden, a Senior Fellow with the Robert S. 

Strauss Center for International Security and Law 

at the University of Texas at Austin.

Dr. Inboden.

DR. INBODEN: Thank you.

Distinguished commissioners, it is an 
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honor to be part of today’s hearing. 

My statement focuses on the ways China is 

co-opting and weakening the UN human rights system 

to make it easier for countries to evade 

accountability for human rights abuses and 

religious freedom intolerance.

Over the last decade, China’s religious 

persecution and efforts to control religious groups 

domestically has mushroomed.

The case of Pastor Wang Yi, who is serving 

a nine-year sentence for peaceful religious 

activity, and the Chinese government’s persecution, 

monitoring and detention of ethnic Uyghurs, are 

emblematic of these abuses.

Some of the PRC’s most damaging actions in 

the UN Human Rights Council include restricting any 

form of country-specific human rights scrutiny, 

including resolutions, special procedures, and 

special sessions.

The PRC takes this position not just for 

itself but for other countries as well. For 
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example, in 2017, when the Human Rights Council was 

considering a resolution on the Rohingya genocide, 

China called for a vote rather than allowing the 

Council to adopt it by consensus and then voted 

against the resolution.

The PRC delegation further framed the 

situation as one that merely required cooperation 

between Bangladesh and Myanmar to resolve, and then 

claimed that, quote:

“The draft resolution did not ease the 

situation. On the contrary, it complicated the 

implementation of the repatriation agreement.” End 

quote.

The PRC’s language attempted to whitewash 

the Rohingya crisis instead of acknowledging the 

Myanmar government’s willful violence against the 

Rohingya.

The PRC has also sought to discredit the 

Special Procedures, the Mandate holders who employ 

vigorous scrutiny. The Special Procedures are 

independent experts assigned to particular human 
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rights issues or a country.

Since 2016, the Special Procedures have 

issued roughly 22 joint public statements 

expressing alarm about China’s human rights 

violations.

In response to these justified concerns, 

China has attacked some of the Special Procedures 

verbally, including claiming that the Special 

Procedure on religious freedom was “wantonly 

spreading false information, lacking minimum 

professional ethics, and serving as a political 

tool for some Western countries and anti -China 

forces.”

The PRC also works with other countries to 

thwart accountability in general. For example, 

China, as well as Indonesia, Vietnam, Myanmar, 

Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Thailand ,

belong to the Like-Minded Group, a coalition of 

countries that hold illiberal human rights views 

and seek to protect each other from scrutiny in the 

UN.
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Finally, the PRC is one of the leading 

countries blunting the Universal Periodic Review 

process, including its own recently concluded 

review in Geneva this week.

For example, despite Vietnam’s troubled 

record on religious freedom, during Vietnam’s last 

UPR, Beijing’s comments included encouraging the 

government to, quote, “continue efforts to 

eliminate inequalities in access to public 

services,” and, quote, “to continue to invest in 

health-care services for women.”

While these are laudable goals, they 

clearly fail to point out Vietnam’s extensive human 

rights abuses.

There are steps that the U.S. government 

can take to strengthen the UN human rights bodies 

and procedures. 

First, the U.S. government should invest 

in ensuring American diplomats have the resources 

they need. 

The PRC mission in Geneva nearly doubles 
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the size of the U.S. mission in Geneva. 

Second, the United States needs to focus 

on cross-regional collaboration, especially with 

Global South countries. This will help break the 

PRC’s efforts to sow division between the Global 

South and the Global North.

Third, the U.S. should be committed to 

participating in the UN human rights system, 

despite its failings, and encourage other states 

with a commitment to religious freedom and human 

rights to stand for an election to the Human Rights 

Council and supporting the candidacy of individuals 

with strong records to serve as experts in the UN 

human rights treaty body system, as well as serving 

as Special Procedure Mandate Holders.

I thank you for your time and attention 

and especially the Commission’s focus on this 

important topic.

CHAIR COOPER: Thank you, Dr. Inboden. 

Our next witness, Dr. James Chin, 

professor of Asian Studies from the University of 
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Tasmania.

Dr. Chin. 

DR. CHIN: Distinguished commissioners, 

thank you very much for the opportunity to appear 

before this Commission.

I understand I will only have about five 

minutes so please excuse me as I rush through this 

presentation.

I’ll be happy to answer questions in 

detail after this presentation.

One area of concern for religious freedom 

in Malaysia and Indonesia is the role played by 

Saudi Arabia. Since the early 1980s, the Saudis 

have tried to export their version of Islam, widely 

called Wahhabism, into the world and in Southeast 

Asia, in particular.

I will not go into details about the 

belief system of Wahhabism other than to say that 

this is a form of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia 

that developed in the 18t h century, led by a cleric 

named Muhammad al-Wahhab.
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In Southeast Asia and other parts of the 

world, sometimes the Wahhabis are also called the 

Salafis. 

In very general terms, this refers to an 

interpretation of Islam that seeks to restore 

Islamic faith and practice to the way that it 

existed at a time of Prophet Muhammad, in other 

words, pure Islam.

They have a very intolerant view of Islam, 

especially towards non-Muslims and other Islamic 

sects.

They do not accept that there are other 

faiths in human societies or other interpretations 

of Quran. 

Many of them believe that other faiths are 

simply idolatry. They support the death sentence 

for apostasy. 

They view religious freedom and liberalism 

as a Western import that contradicts Islamic 

values. 

In general, the Wahhabis/Salafis are part 
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of the Sunni Muslim world. Saudi Arabia began to 

export Salafis’ beliefs starting in the 1980s, and 

one can make the strong argument that the Saudis 

with all the money were using the Salafi network as 

a means to create a network of influence around the 

world.

They saw themselves in competition with 

Iran, especially because Iran was challenging the 

Saudi dominance of geopolitical strategies in the 

Middle East.

They are credible reports that the Saudis 

spend more than 80 to $100 billion on this project 

to assert their influence in the Muslim world.

Indonesia and Malaysia were targeted by 

Saudi Arabia because both are Muslim majority 

countries in Southeast Asia and, in fact, Indonesia 

with a population of more than 280 million is the 

world’s largest Muslim country.

Approximately 88 percent of the population 

in Indonesia call themselves Muslims. 

Malaysia with a population of 32 million 
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is widely seen as an influential and moderate 

country in the Islamic world. This was especially 

true in the 1990s when Mahathir Mohamad was the 

prime minister of Malaysia.

He was an important voice in the 

Organization of Islamic Cooperation. About 65 

percent of the population in Malaysia identify

themselves as Muslim. 

The methods used to export Salafi beliefs 

to Indonesia and Malaysia are quite 

straightforward.

First, the Saudis provide funding for 

mosques, mosque building, religious activities,

Islamic education, what we call madrasas, and also 

direct funding of many Islamic groups that promote 

their beliefs.

Many of this group hide behind charity 

networks. 

Secondly, the Saudis provide a lot of 

scholarships, and here I’m talking about thousands 

of scholarships for young Indonesians and 
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Malaysians to study in Saudi institutions and other 

institutions in the Middle East.

What we do know is that the number of

registered Saudi institutions in Southeast Asia 

easily exceeds more than 100,000. 

And, thirdly, they try to penetrate

political parties and other influentials in 

Malaysia, Indonesia, through visits by Saudi 

authorities, visits by Saudi theologians, and, of 

course, exchange of clerics. 

Many of the activities I mentioned are 

done openly via the Saudi embassies in both 

countries. It is very important to note that the 

Saudis are playing a long game, and they do not 

expect immediate results.

Given that the Saudi influence started in 

the 1980s, we can assume that some of these people 

are holding senior positions today. 

So what do the Saudis want in Southeast 

Asia?

I think what the Saudis are after can be 
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grouped into the following:

First, they want to reinforce the image 

that Salafi beliefs or Wahhabi beliefs and Saudi 

Arabia is at the center of Islam throughout the 

world.

Secondly, I think they want to be a major 

player in Indonesian and Malaysian politics and 

religious class.

Third, they want to block any potential 

Iranian influence and the spread of Shi’a beliefs.

And, fourthly, over the long-term, they 

want Malaysia and Indonesia to become Islamic 

states with a Salafi framework.

It is often very difficult to precisely 

measure the Salafi influence because many 

Indonesians and Malaysian Muslims do not identify 

openly as Salafi in public.

There is also confusion among the Muslim 

population in Indonesia and Malaysia. Many of them 

see the Salafi as simply very conservative or 

strict Muslims. 
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What we do know is that in the past 

decade, there has been a rise in conservative 

political Islam in both countries, and it is 

certain that some of this rise in conservative 

political Islam can be traced back to Salafi 

teachings.

So let me quickly deal with Indonesia 

first. In Indonesia, there’s approximately 1 00,020

madrasas, and scholars have argued that perhaps ten 

to 20 percent of these are influenced heavily by 

the Salafi network.

Many of them use Salafi-influenced 

curriculum, and they’re fully funded through Saudi 

money. 

The two organizations in Indonesia that 

openly identify themselves with the Salafi network 

are the Indonesian Council for Islamic Propagation 

and the College for the Study of Islam and Arabic.

There is also the Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud 

University in Indonesia that also identify 

themselves closely with Salafi teaching.
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In terms of political parties, what I do 

find is that the Salafi network in Indonesia is not 

as strong as those in Malaysia.

As far as I can tell, none of the top 

Salafi leaders in both Indonesia and Malaysia are 

in top political positions in the mainstream 

political parties in both countries.

Many scholars have also argued that the 

Salafi ideology play a major role in the 

radicalization of Indonesian and Malaysian Muslims.

This is a huge topic by itself. All I 

wish to say here is that in terms of terror 

activities, for example, there was a time when ISIS 

was a big problem in the Middle East. They 

actually had a brigade called Katibah Nusantara,

comprised of Malay-speaking militants from 

Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

They even created a special propaganda 

newspaper called al-Fatihin, or the English, the 

Conquerors, in order to specifically recruit 

fighters from Southeast Asia.
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In the early 2000s, there was actually a 

militant movement called the Laskar Jihad, or the 

Warriors of Jihad, operating in Indonesia, and they 

were responsible for the killings of Christians in 

Ambon, Silawesi, and the Maluku Islands.

The good news is that such a group does 

not exist in Malaysia. 

I want to spend a bit of time talking 

about Malaysia because I think Malaysia is a much 

more dangerous place when it comes to religious 

freedom when we compare it to Indonesia.

I mentioned earlier than political parties 

in Indonesia and the Salafi network have not been 

able to take leadership positions in major 

Indonesian political parties.

This is partly due to two major NGOs, 

Islamic NGOs, in Indonesia: the Nahdlatul Ulama, 

Ulama NU, and the Muhammadiyah. 

They act as a shield to intolerance, 

intolerant Islamization in Indonesia.

Both organizations have a combined 
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membership of more than 100 million, and explicitly 

reject the Saudi version of Wahhabism and instead 

promote what it loosely called Islam Nusantara. 

This actually means Islam in Indonesia 

must take into account the local social, cultural 

traditions, and they believe in religious 

tolerance, religious pluralism, and moderation.

Both organizations have said openly they 

do not believe that Indonesia should be an Islamic 

state. Unfortunately, such organizations do not 

exist in Malaysia.

In Malaysia, Islam as a whole is getting 

more intolerant and conservative. A large part of 

it has got to do with the Malaysia constitution and 

identity politics.

One unique feature of the Malaysian 

constitution is that it binds Islam with the Malay 

ethnic group. If you are classified as ethnic 

Malay in government records, you are a Muslim. 

Thus, from the time of independence in 

1957, the identity of the Malay ethnic group in 
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Malaysia has always been tied with Islam.

Under the present law, there is no legal 

avenue for you to leave the Islamic faith if you 

are born Malay.

Over the years, Islamization has been 

purposely inserted into the civil service in 

Malaysia, and some scholars have termed this 

process as the bureaucratization of Islam. 

If I’m not mistaken, this Commission 

actually produced a report on this issue last year. 

In Malaysia, the bureaucratization is undertaken by 

this department called Jabatan Kemajuan Islam 

Malaysia or JAKIM.

There is widespread agreement amongst 

scholars that JAKIM has played a decisive role in 

making Malaysia a much more conservative Islamic 

state.

You can detect Salafi influence materials

in the sermons they produce for all the mosques in 

the country. 

Other scholars have pointed to a process 
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among the ethnic Malays as a sign that the Salafis 

are getting more influential.

Many of the policies pursued by JAKIM show

that they do accept religious freedom and they do 

not support a religious plural society.

Unlike Indonesia, the Salafis have made 

inroads into Malaysian political parties. The 

Salafis are known to have a significant influence 

on Parti Islam Malaysia, or the Islamic Party of 

Malaysia.

As the name suggests, PAS wants to create 

an Islamic state in Malaysia, and PAS is now the 

largest bloc in the Malaysian parliament.

And there’s a distinct possibility that 

this political party, PAS, will be elected into 

power in the next 20 years. This does not mean 

that PAS will immediately change Malaysian 

constitution to become an Islamist state, but it is 

more likely that there will be a period of rapid 

Islamization before the country officially becomes 

an Islamic state. 
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Coming back to the work of this committee, 

the clear danger posed by Saudi Arabia’s Salafi 

beliefs is the creation of an intolerant religious 

environment. They simply do not subscribe to the 

idea that there are other faiths and freedom of 

religion.

The ultimate aim in a Salafi state is to 

create an Islamic country where non-Muslims do not 

enjoy any real political rights unless they convert 

to Islam, and, if they don’t, they will be regarded 

as protected people with limited rights.

In Saudi Arabia, there are reports that 

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salmon is trying to 

reject the Wahhabi religious establishment. How 

this will impact the Salafis in Indonesia and 

Malaysia remains unclear.

Thus far, there is no evidence that the 

Saudi embassies in both countries have revamped or 

reduced their religious outreach activities.

I would argue here that even if the Saudi 

embassy does not promote Salafi beliefs, there is a 
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very limited impact as the outreach is done mostly 

by the Indonesians’ and Malaysians’ Salafi networks 

themselves.

It is very unlikely that a change in the 

beliefs in Saudi Arabia will have any impact on the 

Salafi situation in Southeast Asia.

So, in conclusion, the main points that I 

want to make are the following:

The export of the Salafi beliefs by Saudi 

Arabia started a long time ago, probably more than 

50 years. They wanted to be a major player in 

Islamic affairs, and they want to be the center of 

Islamic affairs around the world.

Part of it has got to do with the 

competition with Iran and their beliefs is very 

strong in pro-Muslim countries. 

The second point is Islam in Southeast 

Asia has traditionally been very tolerant, 

moderate, and accommodating to other faiths’ 

tradition and culture.

The spread of Salafi and other radical 
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teachings has changed the nature of Islam in 

Indonesia and Malaysia, and the biggest change is 

the element of violence and intolerance to wards

other faiths and culture. 

In Indonesia, the Salafis are diverse and 

decentralized. Politically they have not had a 

major impact of any of the major Indonesian 

political parties. 

Threats to freedom of religion are much 

more serious in Malaysia when compared to 

Indonesia. The increasing intolerant brand of 

Islam that is promoted in Malaysia by the 

government, the bureaucracy, and the key Malay 

political parties can only lead to even more 

restrictions on non-Muslims and other Islamic 

groups that do not agree with the Salafi school of 

thought, which is the official ideology of the 

Malaysian Sunni Islam.

Dealing with the issue of religious 

freedom in Malaysia is complicated by the way the 

Malaysian constitution ties religious identity of 
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the majority Malay ethnic group with Islam. 

In Indonesia, other religions are 

officially recognized by the state through the 

Ministry of Religious Affairs, while in Malaysia it 

is totally opposite.

The state only recognizes Islam and even 

holding interfaith dialogue is problematic.

Thank you for listening.

CHAIR COOPER: Thank you very much, 

Professor Chin, for your important insights on 

Indonesia and Malaysia.

Our last, but not least, witness is Andrew 

Khoo, co-chair of the Constitutional Law Committee, 

at the Bar Council of Malaysia. 

The floor is yours.

MR. KHOO: Thank you very much, Chairman 

Cooper, distinguished commissioners, ladies and 

gentlemen.

My name is Andrew Khoo. As I was 

introduced, I’m a lawyer, practicing in Kuala 

Lumpur in Malaysia, and my practice focuses mainly 
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on human rights and constitutional law issues in 

Malaysia, and, in particular, on freedom of 

religion or belief.

Although I co-chair the Malaysian Bar 

Council’s Constitutional Law Committee, I speak 

here today in my individual capacity. 

On the 11t h of January of this year, Turkish 

academic, Dr. Ahmet Kuru, who is a professor of 

political science and Director of the Center for 

Islamic and Arabic Studies at San Diego State 

University, claimed that he was approached by 

police officers, interviewed, and threatened with 

arrest as a terrorist as he waited to board a plane 

from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Lahore in Pakistan.

Dr. Kuru had been in Malaysia at the 

invitation of a nongovernmental organization called 

the Islamic Renaissance Relations Front to launch a 

Malay language translation of his 2019 book 

entitled “Islam, Authoritarianism and 

Underdevelopment: A Global and Historical 

Comparison,” which had been translated and 
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published by the IRF.

He spoke at several events and was 

scheduled to launch his book at an Islamic 

institute associated with a leading local public 

university.

This, however, was cancelled by the 

institute at the last minute. 

A substitute launch had to be put together 

at a private university. Now, for the record, the 

Malaysian police have denied that Dr. Kuru was 

under any investigation and refutes the allegation 

that he was approached by police officers. 

On 17 January this year, a Malaysian film 

producer, Tan Meng Kheng, and a Malaysian film 

director, Khairi Anwar Jailani, were charged in 

separate courts in Malaysia for hurting religious 

feelings in contravention of Section 298 of the 

Malaysian Penal Code.

Both men were released on bail and were 

made subject to a gag order not to make any 

comments about the case.
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They were charged for having produced, 

written and directed a movie entitled “Mentega 

Terbang,” which literally means “Butter Fly,” which 

revolved around a Muslim female teenager seeking to 

understand what other religions believed about 

death and whether there was life thereafter as she 

faced the impending death of her mother from 

cancer.

The movie had actually been released in 

2021, and had earned several awards at 

international film festivals without incident.

However, when, in February 2023, a local 

blogger drew attention to the existence of the 

movie, the director and several of the actors 

became the subject of investigations by either or 

both secular and Islamic religious authorities.

The director and one of the actors 

received death threats, and one of the actors had 

acid thrown at his car. The perpetrators have not 

been identified.

On 8t h of January 2024, it was reported by 
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several local online news portals that a popular 

Muslim religious teacher in Malaysia by the name of 

Azhar Idrus had pronounced that it was prohibited 

by the teachings of the religion of Islam or, in 

other words, haram, for post-pubescent persons to 

go to bed with teddy bears or other such stuffed 

toys.

I mention these three incidents as they 

represent, in my opinion, the latest in a situation 

of the state of religious freedom in Malaysia. And 

they are also reflective of the infiltration of 

certain negative international authoritarian trends 

into the Malaysian religious freedom landscape.

The first is an institutionalized 

intolerance of views that run contrary to the 

accepted religious and/or ideological position of 

the state in countries where the state is neither 

secular nor agnostic.

The views may not necessarily be heretical 

nor need they be unorthodox. However, they 

directly or impliedly cast existing religious or 
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non-secular or ideological regimes in these 

countries as somehow compromised and corrupted by 

the desire of political elites to hold on to 

political power by the control of what can and 

cannot be accepted.

Malaysia has, in the past, for example, 

deported or refouled émigré Uyghurs back to China, 

liberal Muslims back to Saudi Arabia, and alleged 

Gulenists back to Turkey.

We have also had four domestic instances 

of the enforced disappearances of three Christian 

pastors and one Shi’a Muslim religious activist.

The second trend is the increasing resort 

to the criminalization of religious and free speech 

and expression in the guise of preventing 

anticipated or actual breaches of the peace, 

disruptions in public order, or direct threats to 

national security.

Freedom of religion or belief is not 

acceptable where the status quo is deemed to be 

threatened.
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This is assisted in certain circumstances 

by a less than independent judiciary that has all 

too easily surrendered its role as a protector of 

the fundamental liberties under a constitution and 

legitimized such arbitrary detentions in the name 

of safeguarding and preserving the peace, often 

overlooking the loss of any due process rights in 

the course of detention, investigation, and 

prosecution.

Again, we do not have to look too far in 

our region for examples of where this kind of state 

action has been conducted.

The third trend that I have identified is 

the reluctance or failure by governments and others 

in authority to prevent and counter extremism 

before it becomes violent.

Extreme conservative interpretations of 

religious texts are seldom challenged in public. 

Wild and unfounded allegations against minority 

religions by those who claim to speak on behalf of 

the majority religion go unchallenged and 
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unstopped.

Whereas even mild comments touching on the 

majority religion result in accusations of “hurting 

religious feelings” or “stepping on religious 

sensitivities” and invite the heavy-handed 

invocation of the entire machinery of government to 

enforce the law which prohibits the same.

Such an asynchronistic application of the 

law breeds a sense of impunity and immunity amongst 

those who claim to speak on behalf of the 

majoritarian religion or ideology and creates a 

climate of fear and self-censorship amongst those 

who do not share the majoritarian view.

The net result of all the above is a 

rapidly narrowing safe space for honest 

conversations and public dialogues about religions 

and the closing of the minds of people towards 

inter-religious acceptance.

Diversity is not so much accepted as 

tolerated, but only for so long as the peace and 

harmony of the appearance of the majority religion 
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or ideology is not disturbed or overly fragile 

sensitivities not heard.

As a recommendation, perhaps state secular 

and religious authorities may benefit from greater 

exposure via people-to-people contact between the 

United States and Malaysia to multi-religious 

communities that can peacefully coexist and 

practice respect for and acceptance of religious 

diversity and interfaith activities that 

demonstrably exhibit shared values.

I thank the Commission for an opportunity 

to make this statement and welcome any questions.

Thank you very much.

CHAIR COOPER: Thank you, Dr. Khoo, and 

thanks to all of our presenters, especially Dr. 

Khoo, for your unflinching insights on the current 

situation in Malaysia.

So we now, time permitting, we’re going to 

shift for the Q&A session. What we will do is I 

have, as the chair, will ask one question. I will 

then ask our vice chair to also ask a question.
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After that, if you’ll just raise your 

virtual hand, we’ll do our best, and you can either 

ask the question to one of our distinguished 

panelists or throw it open. That would be your 

call.

My question, which I’m going to ask Dr. 

Shields to address, only because we hear so much 

about AI and I understand so little about it, the 

question is can you elaborate on the hiring 

policies of social media companies, such as 

Facebook, Meta, to moderate content in local 

languages, and if this is being replaced by AI, if 

so, are current content moderation technologies 

able to navigate nuances in the vernacular for 

religiously-charged speech, including hate speech, 

on social media?

Dr. Shields.

DR. SHIELDS: Chair Cooper, the answer 

very simply is no, it’s unable to moderate, both in 

the past and in the present. So we’ve done some 

work both with Facebook and been funded by Facebook 
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to look into their moderation policies.

And the conclusions we came to was that 

because of religious—sorry—because of language 

difficulty and barriers, but also inference, and 

all the rest of it associated with different 

languages, moderation is very difficult within this 

region of Southeast Asia, the Asia-Pacific region.

So there is some work being done by 

Facebook and other social media companies. I’m not 

so privy to others, but we’ve worked with Facebook, 

insomuch as they’re trying to moderate, to better 

moderate, but there are still problems associated 

with that, and we have a partner, a think tank in 

Indonesia, called CSIS Indonesia, that you may have

heard of, that tracks hate speech against minority 

groups within Indonesia.

And one of the things that they have 

concluded, it’s on Twitter, not on Facebook, one of 

the things that they’ve concluded is that 

moderation is actually declining on Twitter across 

the Indonesian region.
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And so, and one of the things that 

Twitter, its algorithm, and I’m not sure, so sure 

of the difference between the algorithm and the 

artificial intelligence at this particular point, 

how an algorithm works in comparison to artificial 

intelligence within these platforms. I’m not quite 

sure. 

I mean I think there is some mimicry there 

between the two of them, but that’s not picking up 

on those things that you mentioned, Chair Cooper, 

which is the nuanced terms that may not be 

derogatory within some communities but are within 

others.

Language that is bigoted or racist that is 

used in everyday sort of parlance that’s not picked 

up.

So moderation is a really difficult thing 

for Facebook, and I know they’re working towards a—

Facebook has approached us and a number of folks to 

sort of ask us hypothetical, philosophical 

questions about what we should do.
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And yet I don’t think, I don’t think 

moderation is as extensive as it could be nor as it 

should be.

When it comes to artificial intelligence, 

I’m not quite, well, I mean it’s so new that I’m 

actually not quite sure what social media companies 

are doing.

I know an algorithm works in a particular 

way, but how that relates to artificial 

intelligence and the artificial, and the AI that 

Facebook and others are deploying, I’m not so privy 

to that sort of information, but maybe others have 

more insight.

I hope that answers your question.

CHAIR COOPER: Thank you. It does give a 

degree of solace to hear that maybe despite all the 

flaws of human beings, maybe we should stick in 

pushing for stronger moderation by humans, human 

intervention, with the companies as being involved 

at the other end of, in the United States on 

similar issues with Facebook and others.
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It’s certainly not, there’s no strong 

model that we can point to that should be followed, 

but I think everyone here recognizes the power 

obviously of social media AI.

Thank you very much.

Vice Chair Davie.

VICE CHAIR DAVIE: Thank you, chair. And, 

again, thanks to all of our panelists for their 

really important and significant testimonies.

So this is a related question to the one 

just asked, and it has to do with, with 

international human rights norms and the use of 

technology.

So the question is what concrete action 

should the United States and human rights groups, 

and human rights supporting partners, take to build 

international human rights norms and laws around 

the use of technology?

And I guess I’d ask the related question, 

and might that have, if there are international 

norms and laws governing technology, could that 
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have an impact on moderation in the use of 

technologies, particularly in Southeast Asia, but 

perhaps even around the world?

And I open it up to any one of our guests 

who would like to answer.

CHAIR COOPER: Dr. Inboden spent a long 

time also on the inside of the U.S. government so 

we’d very much like to hear your insights.

DR. INBODEN: Thank you.

That’s an excellent question, and I think 

part of the answer is ensuring that the U.S. and 

other freedom-loving countries are active in the 

multilateral system, not just what is technically 

my field of the human rights bodies, but other 

bodies that appear technological in nature that 

govern international technological standards in

other areas.

So in addition to the Human Rights 

Council, there are other international 

organizations that are relevant where having the 

right experts in the key posts will make a big 
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difference as I think there will be more 

international norms that govern these kinds of 

technological issues.

CHAIR COOPER: Thank you.

Fellow commissioners. We’ll start with 

our good friend and someone who has been impacted, 

whose family, by all of these issues , not just in 

theory, Nury Turkel.

COMMISSIONER TURKEL: Thank you very much, 

Mr. Chairman.

I have a quick comment and two questions 

to the panelists. One is the Southeast Asia 

countries, specifically Muslim countries, that 

we’re discussing, including Malaysia that Dr. Chin 

highlighted some of the issues, the hypocrisy that 

the Muslim countries have shown on atrocity crimes 

committed against fellow Muslims around the world 

is off the chart. 

We have seen their responses that they 

have shown to the Hamas atrocities, and the kind of 

collective outcry shown to the countries supporting 
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the state of Israel. 

At the same time, the MalaysianIndonesian-Saudi-Iranian governments are 

complementing, supporting the ongoing genocide 

committed by the CCP against the Muslim Uyghurs in 

China. So that’s something that people need to be 

reminded around the world.

As for my questions, Dr. Inboden, I have 

been following your work, and I’ve read your 

reports and listened to your public remarks about 

the UN.

Do you think that the UN should be 

reformed? The United States also a big, carries a 

big burden, financial burden, of the UN operations, 

and yet China is using the UN, for example, as you 

noted in your remarks, the miserable failure by the 

Western democracies in September 2022 on the 

resolution.

It seems like the UN has been used as a 

vehicle for countries like China, Iran, to push 

their own political agenda, or silent, silence 
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critics.

If you have any suggestions that you can 

share with us on a reform of the UN system in 

general. 

And then the two, more on the technical 

aspect, this is a question for all of you. We have 

now seen how social media platforms, like TikTok, 

traditionally Facebook played a big role in the 

Rohingya genocide. Today TikTok has been used for 

propagating Hamas propaganda and now Houthis 

propaganda. And it’s not difficult to find the 

things that TikTok has been disseminating.

So is there any concern in the countries 

that you list, specifically in Southeast Asia, that 

this platform may be used against that very 

government, allowing this kind of platform for 

inciting hatred?

Dr. Inboden, if you could start, that 

would be great.

DR. INBODEN: Okay. Thank you so much for 

that question and your work on this Commission. 
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You and I have worked on trying to advance the 

cause of religious freedom and human rights for 

quite awhile now.

As much as it pains me to say this, I 

don’t think it’s the right time for UN reform. The 

Human Rights Council is still relatively new, 

within the span of the lifetime of most 

international organizations. It was created in 

2006.

And so I think it’s not the right time for 

reform, not only because it’s so relatively new, 

but because China through the use of things like 

the Belt and Road Initiative and other, shall we 

say, incentives is able to coral enough support 

that any kind of reform at this point could 

actually go China’s way, restricting things like 

country-specific scrutiny.

I would say rather I would like to see the 

United States and other countries being much more 

active in staying in the Human Rights Council.

I would like to see democracies running 
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for election as often as they can, including making 

sure that the Asia-Pacific region has a competitive 

slate for the Human Rights Council.

The region often tends to just put 

forward, as many of the other regions do, just put 

forward the exact number of candidates as there are 

seats in the Human Rights Council, which is a 

regionally allotted body.

I would also say that I would like to 

commend the U.S. government for using some of the 

tools at its disposal well. Although it did not 

succeed, it was absolutely the right thing to do to 

put forward the resolution on Xinjiang, but that 

the margin with that resolution was defeated was so 

close. I thought it was the right thing to do 

especially because China lobbied so heavily against 

it. 

I would also like to say that the U.S. is 

using some of the tools well. For example, prior 

to the Universal Periodic Review, the U.S. 

government put forward 15 questions to the Chinese 
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government, including one question that asked about 

over 20 prisoners of conscience.

So I would say I would encourage the U.S. 

to continue investing in this way.

COMMISSIONER TURKEL: Thank you.

CHAIR COOPER: Thank you.

We have three commissioners who want to 

ask questions, but before we do that, Professor 

Chin, if you have a quick comment on this issue 

that you’d like to add?

DR. CHIN: Yes. Thank you very much, 

chair.

This is answering Commissioner Nury’s 

query about the use of TikTok and social media.

So, back in 2022, TikTok and Facebook were 

the major reasons why Bongbong Marcos won the 

elections in the Philippines. TikTok was also the 

major factor that was used in the victory of Parti 

Islam Malaysia, the Islamic party, in the November 

2022 general elections in Malaysia.

I think part of the problem we have with 
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the use of social media in Southeast Asia is that 

increasingly it is being weaponized. It is not 

only being used to spread religious hatred, but it 

is being used to spread racial hatred as well.

It is very, very effective. Studies have 

shown it is very effective with young people, but 

increasingly recent study shows that it’s also very 

effective among older members of the population as 

well.

And the reason why it is so effective is 

because it is spread through private networks such 

as Telegram and WhatsApp.

So if you would ask me what’s a 

recommendation I will make, it is that if the U.S. 

wants to pass any laws or any regulations with 

companies like TikTok or Telegram that operate in 

America, you have to make sure that these rules 

also apply internationally.

Thank you.

CHAIR COOPER: Thank you.

So we have three commissioners with hands 
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raised. We have Commissioner Schneck, Commissioner 

Curry, and Commissioner Gelman.

So if we can get your questions in, and 

Commissioner Wolf, so we have four as the clock 

ticks away to the top of the hour.

Commissioner Schneck.

COMMISSIONER SCHNECK: Thank you, Chair 

Cooper. I’ll be quick.

I have two questions, two quick questions,

that I’d like to pose to Ms. Lee.

I had the opportunity with USCIRF to visit 

the camps at Cox’s Bazar so I’m very familiar with 

the situation of the Rohingya there, more than a 

million refugees living in just frankly horrible 

questions.

So I appreciate your work in this area, 

Ms. Lee.

My questions, though, are about the 

Tatmadaw’s use of technologies, social media 

technologies and other technologies, to target the 

Rohingya. Is there anything that the United States 
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might be able to do to mitigate or to, or in some 

way make some progress against that use there?

And then if I could ask a similar question 

really quickly. Is the National Unity Government, 

NUG, is it aware of the Tatmadaw’s use of these 

technologies?

MS. LEE: Thank you so much for the 

wonderful question .

To answer that question, I think because 

CCP has a great influence on Myanmar’s tactics, 

maybe kind of having a dialogue with CCP is the 

best because my research, like I’ve done research 

where I was comparing the rate of hate crimes and 

the rate of Myanmar refugees leaving Myanmar, and 

the number of international aid and international 

publication, and it showed kind of no relationship, 

meaning that Tatmadaw because they’re 

authoritarian, they don’t really care about 

international pressure.

So even if like U.S. pressures Facebook or 

pressure Myanmar with these kind of online 
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activities, they don’t really, they have little 

response, but they will listen to China.

So I think what’s important for us, what’s 

important for the U.S. can do, is kind of talk to 

CCP first about international support. Yeah. Does 

that answer your question?

COMMISSIONER SCHNECK: Yes. Also about 

the National Unity Government’s awareness of these 

tactics?

MS. LEE: The National Unity Government is 

the--

COMMISSIONER SCHNECK: The opposition 

groups within--

MS. LEE: Yeah. Right. Now I think they 

are aware of the practice because it has been found 

evidence by the Facebook as well as the UN 

investigations. 

So they’re all aware, but I think they’re 

also under digital surveillance as well, so they 

don’t really have much power to combat the 

Tatmadaw.
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COMMISSIONER SCHNECK: Okay. Thank you.

CHAIR COOPER: Thank you. Thank you, 

Commissioner.

Commissioner Curry.

COMMISSIONER CURRY: Thank you, Chair 

Cooper.

Another gratitude to the staff and to 

those presenting. This is absolutely fascinating, 

and, as usual, we probably could use some more time 

because I have questions for everybody.

However, I’m going to nail it down to a 

couple. Mr. Shields, to what degree, I know there 

is positives on the one side for moderation of hate 

speech, but to what degree is your sense, the 

Institute and you yourself, that socials are 

actually helping to suppress the freedom of 

information in some of these countries?

To the degree that they’re collaborating 

with those who are restraining information, it 

feels like we’re at this weird space in time where 

in many cases the people closest to a particular 
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problem know the least about it because the 

governments don’t want the information to get 

there, and then the socials, in order to keep their 

shingle up in a particular country, collaborate 

with the government.

Could you have some insight on that?

My second question is for Mr. Chin. I 

have a dear friend, Mr. Raymond Koh, who is on our 

list, the USCIRF list of people who have either 

been imprisoned or disappeared. He’s been gone 

almost eight years now.

The government itself of Malaysia on 

camera kidnapped Mr. Pastor Koh. It may be in 

connection with what have been called “reeducation 

camps.” To what degree, do you see Malaysia and 

other countries in that region potentially using 

reeducation camps to try to reprogram people back 

to the faith of their choosing?

CHAIR COOPER: Thank you, commissioner. 

Those are two powerful questions. Let’s 

go to our distinguished panelists for the answers. 
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First, Dr. Shields.

DR. SHIELDS: Thank you, Chair Cooper. 

Thank you, Commissioner Curry.

That’s a really interesting question. I 

think the word you used was—sorry, I’m formulating 

my answer—you used the word, there was some sort of 

relation between the two of them.

But, in fact, I think the best word is an 

“apathy” on behalf of the social media companies 

when it comes to government use of social media to 

promote its own, promote its own agenda.

I think, and that’s something that is not 

only, I mean it’s, it’s about not only apathy but 

also a benefit to social media company to remain 

apathetic. 

That is to remain kind of to the sideline 

of all that can happen with social media platforms 

that they’re on for economic benefits really 

because it’s a hell of a region to try and 

regulate. It’s a quest in and of itself.

So I don’t think there’s a wanton 
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collaboration. I’m not sure, but it’s certainly 

not, I don’t think they’re in cahoots. I don’t 

think there’s any sort of dialogue—maybe there is—

but going on between offices and with government.

And if there is, it’s always educational. 

So, for example, I know Facebook in Indonesia, for 

example, offered educational programs to some, to 

civil society, ministries, and things like that, 

but there’s definitely an apathy or it’s too hard, 

put things in the too-hard basket and therefore 

sort of turn a blind eye to problems associated 

with social media companies and their platforms in 

relation then to misuse of these platforms for 

government and ministerial purposes.

Does that answer your question?

COMMISSIONER CURRY: Yes.

CHAIR COOPER: Thank you, Dr. Shields.

Professor Chin, could you enlighten us on 

Commissioner Curry’s second question?

DR. CHIN: Thank you very much.

I also want to add in terms of the social 
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media, my personal opinion is that the social media 

companies are really not interested in 

restrictions. They make money through people using 

their social media app.

In other words, they want people to keep 

using it so in terms of trying to restrict them 

using it, they really have no interest.

Even though in public they claim to have 

an interest, I suspect from what I’ve seen in 

Southeast Asia, they really have no interest in 

reining in any of the social media misuse.

In terms of Pastor Koh, it is my 

understanding that the use of reeducation camp is 

not for the non-Muslims in Malaysia. It is for 

Muslims who do not agree with the official state -

version of Sunni Islam in Malaysia.

In terms of Pastor Koh, if you were to ask 

me to guess, I would guess that Pastor Koh is no 

longer with us.

COMMISSIONER CURRY: Wow.

CHAIR COOPER: Thank you.
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COMMISSIONER CURRY: Wow.

CHAIR COOPER: Wow.

Commissioner Gelman, that’s a difficult 

statement to come off on, but if you can share your 

question, we’d appreciate it.

COMMISSIONER GELMAN: Thank you. And it 

is a difficult statement to come off on, and given 

the time, I’ll be very quick.

My, my comment/question is really a 

follow-up from what my colleague Commissioner 

Turkel was raising about genocide.

I would note that tomorrow, the 

International Court of Justice in The Hague is 

expected to rule on South Africa’s claims that 

Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

At the same time—and by the way, Saturday 

is International Holocaust Remembrance Day —so the 

juxtaposition is one that is difficult. And yet we 

see clear cases of genocide against the Rohingya, 

against the Uyghurs, but we don’t see the same sort 

of international outcry or attempt bringing them to 
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account in international fora, such as the Court of 

Justice.

I just was wondering if any of our

panelists—and thank you so much for your 

presentations—if you have any thoughts about that 

or do you see any opportunity to bring, bring these 

countries that are actually committing genocide to 

account?

Thank you very much.

CHAIR COOPER: I’m going to, as chair, 

suggest that if Andrew Khoo has a comment on that 

question?

Time permitting, we’ll take a few other 

reactions.

MR. KHOO: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I mean to address the specific question 

from Commissioner Gelman, I mean there is, I think 

one of the other questioners or other commissioners 

used the word “hypocrisy.”

There is a hypocrisy in the sense that, 

firstly, certain things are recognized as genocide. 
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So, for example, you know, what allegedly is 

happening in the Middle East is seen as a genocide 

against the Palestinians. What the Tatmadaw is 

doing to the Rohingya was also seen to be genocide.

And if you remember, there was a challenge 

by The Gambia against the Myanmar government in the 

ICJ on this particular issue as well.

So it’s not that there hasn’t been 

pushback. Certainly, some of the alleged 

perpetrators are being called to account for some 

of the activities. However, countries like 

Malaysia, which on the one hand wants to support, 

you know, all these legal actions, but then it’s 

not prepared to sign up to international treaties 

or join something like the International Criminal 

Court because of other reasons.

So Malaysia’s position on the Rome 

Statute, for example, is full of hypocrisy.

On the one hand, they recognize genocide, 

but they say that for Malaysia to become a member 

of the Rome Statute and the International Criminal 
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Court is somehow a violation of Islamic law or 

respect for the royal families in Malaysia, which 

because they aren’t the heads of religion is 

somehow also connected with insult to religion.

So it really doesn’t make any sense at 

all, and really there’s no consistency in approach. 

And while I still have the mike or the 

floor, as it were, can I just answer Commissioner 

Curry’s question about reeducation?

And Dr. Chin is absolutely correct. 

Reeducation camps are not used for non -Muslims. 

They’re used for Muslims.

So, in Malaysia, there are several state 

laws that basically prescribe that if a Muslim was 

thinking about leaving his or her religion, they 

would be subject to reeducation, mandatory, 

compulsory detention into a reeducation center for 

a period of maybe six months, sometimes even up to 

with extensions a year for them to be, you know, 

advised, counseled, and reeducated that their ideas 

of wanting to leave the religion are misguided.
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So there’s actually the forced detention 

that takes place in order to correct attitudes by 

Muslims thinking of or wanting to convert out of 

Islam.

Thank you.

CHAIR COOPER: Thank you, Dr. Khoo.

And for our final question and comment, of 

course, we come back to our moral GPS, our leader, 

our Commissioner Wolf.

COMMISSIONER WOLF: Thank you, Mr. Chair, 

and I want to thank the staff for setting this up, 

and I want to thank the witnesses. I’ve learned so 

much, and I’ve written out. 

So I’m going to have one major question. 

Do you believe with all the bad things that are 

taking place because of TikTok, which is a Chinese 

company, and we see what China is doing to the 

Uyghur Muslims, genocide, genocide.

I mean nobody seems to be talking—genocide 

where they’re ready to literally wipe Tibet off the 

map. It’s genocidal activity and Tibet culture ,
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genocide.

We see what’s taking place with the 

Catholic Church, the protestant church, the Falun 

Gong, and I talked to some young kids about, oh, 

maybe three, four weeks ago, and they don’t read 

newspapers. They don’t read magazines. They don’t 

watch CBS, ABC, NBC. They don’t watch anything.

They look at TikTok. And I think what 

TikTok is doing with regard to support Hamas, the 

terrible activities, and you look at what they’re 

doing. I believe personally that we should ban in 

America, we should ban TikTok.

Do you all believe that we should ban 

TikTok?

CHAIR COOPER: Well, we don’t have time 

for everyone to comment so why don’t we just use 

the old-fashioned thing. Those of you who believe 

it should be, TikTok should be removed, please 

raise your hand.

[Show of hands.]

CHAIR COOPER: Those of you who believe 
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there are other ways to deal with the issues that 

have just been raised if you’d raise your hand.

[Show of hands.]

CHAIR COOPER: Thank you very much. 

We have at least 25 seconds left before. 

What’s the old comment? Before we lose our 

satellite feed.

What an amazing group that have come to 

testify. I think we’ve all been humbled by the 

level of their knowledge and their input. We’re 

grateful that they’re on the front lines of these 

issues.

And we hope that the audiences will walk 

away with as many questions and challenges as the 

commissioners in USCIRF had. 

Thank you very much. That’s all the time 

we have today.

[Whereupon, at 5:00 p.m. ET, the hearing 

was adjourned.]