2025 Contest Rules:
The Catholic University of America’s Center for Human Rights is hosting its third-ever Human Rights Essay Contest. This year’s prompt is:
“You have just been appointed US Secretary of State, and your job is to advise the President on policy toward China. What advice would you give the President?” Choose issue #1 or #2 (1500 words):
- Issue #1: Promoting human rights in China
- Issue #2: Protecting democracy in the United States from the Communist Party’s influence
Essays are due by June 15, 2025. Students of all ages (high school and up) are invited to submit essays to deatherage@cua.edu.
Top Essays Receive Cash Prizes
$4,000 Cash Grand Prize!
2024 Contest Winners:
1. PETER TOZZI (Academia Sinica): The CCP’s Genocide Against the Uyghurs: Why Americans Should Care
2. SARAH THOMAS (Catholic U): The Future of China: Religious Freedom and Ecological Civilization
2. PETER JAMES (Catholic U): China’s Death Camps
3. JONATHAN FROELICH (Catholic U): A Practical Plan for Chinese Human Rights Intervention by the United States
3. DAMIANA ZABOROWSKI (Catholic U): Desecration of the Human Person: China’s Practice of Murdering Political Prisoners in order to Sell Their Organs
3. FATHER AMBROSE (Catholic U): Technology Censorship of Religious Groups in China
Explore these winning essays below!
2024 Essay Contest Winners
The CCP’s Genocide Against the Uyghurs: Why Americans Should Care
By Peter Tozzi, First Place Winner of our 2024 Human Rights Essay Contest In some 380 internment camps, over one million Uyghurs—a predominantly Muslim, Central Asian people—are held captive by
The Future of China: Religious Freedom and Ecological Civilization
The following is the second place winner of the Center for Human Rights’s annual essay contest, written by Sarah Thomas. China is on the rise, destined to become a global
China’s Death Camps
By Peter James, Second Place winner of the 2024 Human Rights Essay Contest Gunshots. “The last one is yours,” shouts a man. “Hurry up, extract the liver and two kidneys.”
2023 Essay Contest Winners
The Failure of Communist China
By Peter James, Second Place Winner of our 2023 Human Rights Essay Contest Every government system has its strengths, but certain strengths come with certain weaknesses. Communism’s weaknesses outweigh its
Revisiting ‘Centisimus Annus’ and American Ideals Amid the CCP’s Human Rights Atrocities
By Brandon Showalter, Second Place Winner of our 2023 Human Rights Essay Contest “She did not know at all that she had swept away the logic of the mind, the
The Antidote against the CPP Virus
By Jose Nunes, First Place Winner of our 2023 Human Rights Essay Contest In his autobiography, Treasure in Clay, Archbishop Fulton Sheen describes the captivating faith of a Chinese girl
2024 Contest Rules
This Spring of 2024, The Catholic University of America’s Center for Human Rights is hosting its second-ever Human Rights Essay Contest. This year’s prompt is:
“Choose a human rights issue in China that you believe needs moreattention. What current initiatives are working to address it, and whatcan Americans do to support Chinese people who are affected by it? (1000 words)”
Essays are due by April 25, 2024. Students of all ages (high school and up) are invited to submit essays to deatherage@cua.edu. Prizes Include:
Signed copy of The Barefoot Lawyer
Appearance on The Barefoot Lawyer Reports on China podcast
Publication on Center for Human Rights website
$1,000 Cash Prize
2024 First Place Essay: The CCP's Genocide Against the Uyghurs: Why Americans Should Care
By Peter Tozzi
“In some 380 internment camps, over one million Uyghurs—a predominantly Muslim, Central Asian people—are held captive by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).1 Both in and out of the camps, the CCP commits a slow and chilling genocide against the Uyghurs through enforced population control, systematic rape, family separation, and forced marriages. These atrocities inflicted upon the Uyghurs are an attempt to eradicate and sinicize their population.” Continue Reading
2024 Second Place (Tied) Essay: The Future of China: Religious Freedom and Ecological Civilization
By Sarah Thomas
“China is on the rise, destined to become a global power. Though some point to a loss in economic dynamism, other aspects are driving China’s success. For instance, China has been on the vanguard in its response to the environmental crisis facing the global community. The Chinese government was among the first to declare a commitment to becoming an ecological civilization, a notion “consistent with ancient Chinese Taoist philosophy” and affirmed by Pope Francis in Laudato Si’ as well as by thinkers inspired by Alfred North Whitehead’s concept of world-loyalty.” Continue Reading
2024 Second Place (Tied) Essay: China's Death Camps
By Peter James
“Gunshots. “The last one is yours,” shouts a man. “Hurry up, extract the liver and two kidneys.” says another. It is a hot, summer day, and you are pressured to get to work— an officer and a surgeon just gave you orders. You see “yours”, he is a civilian in his 30s. There is a bullet wound in his chest. He is still alive. “Hurry up”, you grab the scalpel, but before you cut in, you ask for anesthetic. The request is denied, and you are again told to hurry up. You cut in. Feeling like an eternity, the whole operation lasted about half an hour. The crew of surgeons pack the organs in a strange container, and you head back to the hospital with them. You are told that nothing happened. That was the experience of Dr. Enver Tohti Bugdha.” Continue Reading
2024 Third Place (Tied) Essay: A Practical Plan for Chinese Human Rights Intervention by the United States
By Jonathan Froelich
“A war between the U.S. and China would not be a war in the “traditional” sense. Instead of hunkering down in trenches or foxholes, “soldiers” will be hunched over computer keyboards fighting not on land or at sea, but in cyberspace or on other virtual battlefields. But make no mistake, it will be a war, and one which America could easily lose.
But this bleak future is not preordained, and its theoretical existence does not mean nothing can be done by America about the abysmal human rights situation in China. But America must proceed carefully. International diplomacy is rarely an easy task, but repairing Chino-American relations to the point where we can begin working towards improvement in the human rights arena will be particularly tedious and challenging.” Continue Reading
2024 Third Place (Tied) Essay: Desecration of the Human Person: China's Practice of Murdering Political Prisoners in order to Sell Their Organs
By Damiana Zaborowski
“China has decided to put a modern spin on the classic tale of Robin Hood. Rather than stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, the CCP (i.e. the Chinese Communist Party) has found that it is more profitable to steal organs from the poor and otherwise vulnerable in their own prison systems, and to sell these organs to those who are more monetarily fortunate. China first began taking the organs of prisoners who received the death penalty in 1984, and “in 2005, the government first openly stated that the majority of organs came from executed prisoners.”1 These prisoners are often political opponents of the CCP, or a part of a religious or ethnic minority that the CCP is trying to exploit, eradicate, and deprive of a dignified and natural death; they are not locked away for any true crime. This practice of involuntary organ harvesting is only increasing, and is becoming increasingly organized.2 The situation is horrifying and deserves the active attention of all who value the dignity of the human person, and respect the human body.” Continue Reading
2024 Third Place (Tied) Essay: Technology Censorship of Religious Groups in China
By Father Ambrose
“Technology censorship is the use of technology by a government to control or limit access to information, including filtering internet content and regulating access to electronic devices. While the internet offers a cheap and easy way for religious groups to communicate, government filtering can disrupt this. This form of censorship is effective because it’s cheap, hard to detect, and restricts information quickly. In China, numerous Christian websites, including the Bible, have been blocked. Virtual Private Network (VPN) usage surged in 2018 as internet restrictions tightened. The CCP views smartphones as a significant information threat, second only to foreign missionaries.” Continue Reading
2023 First Place Essay: The Antidote against the CCP Virus
By Jose Nunes
“In his autobiography, Treasure in Clay, Archbishop Fulton Sheen describes the captivating faith of a Chinese girl around the time of the Maiost Revolution in 1949. After a priest started saying Mass, Communists soldiers stormed into his church, grabbed and put him under house arrest in an adjoining room. They also opened the tabernacle, threw the consecrated Hosts on the floor, and robbed the Sacred Vessels. As the priest began to pray in atonement for these sacrilegious acts, he witnessed the courage of a girl who would sneak into the church every day at 3 am to take communion by pressing her tongue against the Holy Host laying on the floor. She would continue to do so for about 30 days taking one Host a day. Finally, when there was only one left, she went to the church as usual and took it. Unwillingly, she was seen by a Communist soldier who immediately shot and killed her. This girl came to be called “Little Li”; her story illustrates the evil of communism and provides an inspirational model of how to stand against it.” Continue Reading
2023 Second Place (Tied) Essay: Revisiting ‘Centesimus Annus’ and American Ideals Amid the CCP’s Human Rights Atrocities
By Brandon Showalter
“She did not know at all that she had swept away the logic of the mind, the logic of history, the logic of politics, the myth of the 20th century, with five annihilating words: one night he heard screams.” – Whittaker Chambers, “Witness” In arguably the most memorable passage of his 1952 book, “Witness,” Soviet spy-turned-Christian Whittaker Chambers documented the visceral screams of communism’s victims that a formerly pro-Soviet German diplomat had heard in Moscow. As the diplomat’s daughter recounted to Chambers, these were the soul-piercing cries that jolted her father out of his ideological stupor.” Continue Reading
2023 Second Place (Tied) Essay: The Failure of Communist China
By Peter James
“Every government system has its strengths, but certain strengths come with certain weaknesses. Communism’s weaknesses outweigh its strengths, and communist China is no exception. Winston Churchill famously noted, “Indeed it has been said that Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time”.1 Perhaps President Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party should heed that truth. But the CCP’s whole foundation and power rests on being antithetical to truth.” Continue Reading