RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION AROUND THE WORLD
China Intensifies Religious Persecution
May 3, 2001China's violation of religious freedom has intensified, a U.S. panel said Monday in a report. "The situation in China has grown worse in the past year," according to Elliott Abrams, chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. The group's second annual report urged the United States to prod Beijing to ease its restrictions.
The 188-page document also accused India, Indonesia, Russia, Pakistan, Nigeria, Iran, Sudan, Vietnam and North Korea of either directly violating religious freedoms, permitting local or regional governments to restrict freedoms or ignoring intercommunity violence.
In China, the report said, the government has expanded its crackdown on unregistered religious groups, tightened control on official religious organizations, intensified its campaign against the Falun Gong spiritual movement and increased control over official Protestant and Catholic churches.
The panel urged the U.S. government to try to persuade China to ease its grip on religious freedom. Until China loosens restrictions, the commission said, Washington should continue to sponsor a resolution to censure China at the U.N. Commission on Human Rights.
--Used by permission of Religion Today
U.S. Grants Asylum to Persecuted Chinese Pastor
April 26, 2001Rutherford Institute attorneys have secured a grant of asylum for a Chinese pastor who faced repression from the government of the People's Republic of China for his evangelical Christian beliefs, the Institute reported Monday.
Now using the assumed name Wei Min Hu, the pastor sought religious asylum after entering the United States on the grounds that he would be jailed if he returned to China. A friend who had served as a Bible study leader with Hu disappeared in 1993 and is reportedly in a Chinese labor camp.
The U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals, which had at first denied Hu's request, reversed its decision on April 2. The board credited Hu's assertion "that despite the Chinese government's release of high-profile dissidents, the Chinese government has become more strict with regard to individuals involved with religious activities and that religious individuals are feared more than political demonstrators."
Hu says he intends to devote the rest of his days to God and to the spiritual liberation of the Chinese people.
--Used by permission of Religion Today
Beijing Arrests Catholic Bishop
April 25, 2001Beijing police have arrested Shi Enxiang, a 79-year-old bishop in China's underground Roman Catholic Church, The Washington Post reported Monday. Shi, the bishop of Yixian in China's northern Hebei province, had been in hiding from Chinese authorities since 1996. He was arrested on April 13 on a visit to Beijing, the Cardinal Kung Foundation told the Post. Shi has spent a total of nearly 30 years in jail and was most recently incarcerated between 1990 and 1993.
According to The Post, China's communist leaders have established a state-sanctioned church for Chinese Catholics, run by Beijing-appointed prelates who reject the legitimacy of the pope. An estimated 12 million Chinese loyal to Rome worship at clandestine prayer meetings often held in private homes.
Last year, authorities in a number of Chinese provinces demolished churches and places of worship used by scores of Protestant groups, and thousands of privately built temples for folk worship. In its annual report on human rights, the U.S. State Department has condemned China for a crackdown on Christians who worship outside the official churches.
--Used by permission of Religion Today
China's Persecution of Christians Confirmed
February 27, 2001That China engages in organized, severe persecution of religious activity is confirmed by the U.S. State Department's 2000 Report on International Religious Freedom. It states that in some regions, officials "imposed tight regulations, closed houses of worship, and actively persecuted members of some unregistered religious groups."
This is consistent with the reports of The Bible League, a world-wide ministry that is a leading supplier of Bibles to the house churches of China, almost all of which are unregistered.
The Rev. Dennis Mulder, president of The Bible League, says, "We have one of the most extensive network of contacts with house churches. We have worked with trusted and committed partners in this ministry who have been imprisoned, beaten, fined, harassed, and even tortured by Chinese government officials. As the State Department shows, these events have increased, rather than decreased, in the past two years.
--Used by permission of Religion Today
Chinese Punish over 200 Members of Falun Gong
January 22, 2001Chinese courts have punished more than 200 adherents of the Falun Gong spiritual movement in the past 18 months, and sentenced an undisclosed number to labor camps in an ongoing crackdown on the outlawed group. The Falun Gong group practices a combination of traditional Chinese slow- motion exercises and Buddhist and Taoist principles, that practitioners claim promotes good health.
Some of those detained were offered reduced sentences and early release in order "to educate and save them to the maximum extent," according to a spokesman's report to the Associated Press. "Most followers given labor camp sentences participated many times in disturbances, making trouble and disrupting social order," said the spokesman, "and no one was sent to a labor camp purely because they practiced Falun Gong." The announcement ran counter to claims from human rights groups that thousands of Falun Gong followers in China have been imprisoned or sentenced to labor camps, according to Religion News Service reports < http://www.religionnews.com >.
Specific information is seldom released by Chinese officials as to the group's treatment at the hands of the country's police and court system. But one Hong Kong-based group claims that as many as 10,000 Falun Gong members have been sent to labor camps.
The Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy also claims some 92 followers have died while in police custody since the group was outlawed in July, 1999.--Used by permission of Religion Today
China Shuts Down Thousands of Churches
Thursday, December 14, 2000China is demolishing hundreds of underground Christian churches and temples. Chinese newspapers have reported a crackdown on unauthorized worship in the southern coastal city of Wenzhou, an area isolated from government control where religions, private enterprise, and smuggling thrive, according to news reports.
More than 1,000 temples, churches, and ancestral halls in the area have been shut down since November, and many have been demolished, according to articles in state-run newspapers. One newspaper reported that officials used explosives to destroy a large church on Dec. 1, and another newspaper published a photograph of workers smashing "illegal religious centers" with sledgehammers, according to news reports.
China says it allows religious freedom, but it restricts religious practice. Congregations are required to be sanctioned by the government, and those that are not often are accused of defrauding or abusing their followers. A number of unapproved sects, cults, and underground religious groups have prospered as Communist ideology loses its appeal, according to The Washington Post.
The heavy-handed actions come less than a month after China agreed to resume human rights talks with the United States, and just before Christmas. "All these important feast days, like Christmas and Easter, they always crack down," Joseph Kung, head of the U.S.-based Cardinal Kung Foundation, told Agence France-Presse.--Used by permission of Religion Today
Youth Dies in Chinese Crackdown
Monday, October 23, 2000A Chinese Christian teen-ager died in police custody after being beaten, then denied medical care, a human rights group says. Liu Haitong, 19, was arrested Sept. 4 in a police raid on an underground house-church in Xiayi county, Henan province, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy.
After days of beatings and malnourishment, Liu began vomiting and developed a high fever, but jail officials refused to provide medical care, the center told the Beijing office of The Associated Press. The Henan Christians who informed the center of Liu's death blamed the police and demanded a stop to two years of repression, the AP reported.
Henan is at the center of house-church crackdowns, the AP reported. The province is home to many thriving congregations that are illegal because they do not have state approval. Many are led by evangelical pastors, some of them foreigners.
Chinese police have renewed orders to target "religious extremists," a phrase that means people who worship outside China's official churches, the center told the AP. This month, after a meeting of the Communist Party elite, Public Security Minister Jia Chunwang ordered tighter scrutiny of and control over house-church worshipers, cultists, and separatists, the AP reported.--Used by permission of Religion Today
© 2001 by Eyler Robert Coates, Sr.
All rights reserved.
