TAIPEI (Taiwan News) - The United States will send Sam Brownback, its Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, to Taiwan next month to attend an international conference, reports said Thursday.

The Taiwan Democracy Foundation was scheduled to host a “civil society dialogue about the protection of religious freedoms in the Indo-Pacific region,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on February 3.

The plans were a result of last July’s first global ministerial-level conference on religious freedom held in the U.S. and hosted by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the Liberty Times reported.

The paper quoted the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) as saying it valued the joint work on next month’s meeting and the efforts to discuss religious freedoms in the region. Brownback, a former Republican Governor of Kansas, would lead the U.S. delegation attending the Taiwan event, AIT said.

China has been noted in the region for persecuting various religions, including Christians and Muslims, especially under the increasingly authoritarian rule of President Xi Jinping (習近平).