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Persecution of the Christian Underground in China

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Persecution of the Christian Underground in China Persecution of the Christian Underground in China Conclusions of the Puebla Program on Religious Freedom June 6, 1997 The seven conclusions that follow are based on the findings of an investigative mission to China led by Dr. Paul Marshall for the Puebla Program on Religious Freedom of Freedom House in May 1997. Dr. Marshall's findings immediately follow the conclusions. 1. China is continuing and intensifying its campaign against the Christian underground. The persecution against the underground generally is worse than it has been since the early 1980s. Repression against the underground churches began to rise in 1994 after Beijing issued decrees 144 and 145 mandating the registration of religious groups. Initially government authorities attempted to induce registration by providing incentives-such as making Bibles available-and by forcing the house-churches to close. As of the summer of 1996, members of the Christian underground have noted a ratcheting up of the pressure against them, with authorities adopting harsher tactics. In particular, authorities have begun to target underground house-church leaders for arrest. Three-year sentences of "re-education" in labor camps are being more frequently reported for underground Christian leaders. For Protestants, Henan province is one of the areas hardest hit. Protestant leaders report that about 40 percent of inmates in Henan laojiao or labor camps are there for belonging to the Christian underground. In Henan Number One Labor Camp, approximately 50 out of 126 inmates are imprisoned for underground church activities. During the Freedom House team's visit 85 house-church Christians were rounded up and arrested in two dragnet operations on May 14 in Zhoukou, Henan. On March 16, Peter Xu Yongze, perhaps the most important underground Protestant leader in China who heads the enormous "Full Scope Church" (also referred to as the "New Birth Church") network, was arrested and jailed with seven others in Henan. The Freedom House team received reports that 300 Protestants have been arrested in Louyang jail in Henan since July 1996. And it was in Henan that Zhang Xiuju, a 36-year old woman was beaten to death by police during an arrest for underground Christian activities on May 26, 1996. The enormous underground Catholic pilgrimage at Our Lady of China Shrine in Donglu, Hebei Province, was prevented from taking place again this May. In Spring 1996 the pilgrimage-which had attracted at least 10,000 Catholics the prior year according to the Far Eastern Economic Review was crushed, the presiding priests and several bishops were imprisoned, and the shrine was desecrated. Many of the Christian leaders interviewed believe that the crackdown is an attempt by the government to eradicate the Christian underground. Observing the role played by the churches in the democratization of the Soviet empire, the government views the churches within its own borders as a political threat. In recent months this political insecurity has been heightened by the death of Deng Xiaopeng and the take-over of Hong Kong. [Two recent official documents have surfaced in the West that support the observation that the government is set on an aggressive course to eradicate the underground churches: "Opinions Concerning the Implementation of the Special-Class Struggle Involving the Suppression of Catholic and Protestant Activities According to Law," issued by the Tong Xiang City Municipal Public Security Bureau, Chinese Communist Party Tong Xiang City Committee United Front Works Department, Feb. 27, 1997; and "The Legal Procedures to Implement the Eradication of Illegal Activities/Operations of the Underground Catholic Church," Issued by Donglai Township Committee, Chinese Communist Party for the County Committee of Chongren Xian in the Fuzhou District of Fujian Province, Nov. 20, 1996]. 2. The intensifying persecution is pervasive. While some provinces are more repressive than others, repression has been stepped up in all the Provinces and regions from where the Freedom House team received reports, which represent over half of China. There are local areas where police tolerate underground Christianity, and indeed where some authorities and Communist officials are themselves part of the church, but the overall pattern of repression is not local but national. 3. Public Security Bureau police have tortured a number of underground Christians during interrogation over the past year. Underground Christians report brutal beatings that have resulted in paralysis, coma, and even death in some cases. Other methods of torture reported include binding detainees in excruciating positions, hanging detainees from their limbs, tormenting them with electric cattle prods, electric drills and other implements, and crushing the feet and ankles of Christians while they are forced to kneel. In some cases, the torture is applied to be witnessed by relatives, which itself is a form of psychological torture. 4. The underground Christian churches are the only nationwide civic grouping that exists outside of government control in China. There is, not even in the underground, an independent press, such as the samizdat presses that were found in the Soviet Union; there are no independent human rights groups or labor unions. As the U.S. Department of State reported in its annual human rights assessment for 1996, no dissidents are active in China. 5. While Pastors Allen Yuan (Yuan Xiangchen) and Samuel Lam (Lin Xiangoa) e two of the most outstanding house-church leaders, their situation is not typical, as they themselves are the first to acknowledge. Allen Yuan's church has been closed down but he still operates with comparatively little interference from security officials. Samuel Lamb operates openly with up to 500 congregates in proximity to a police station and has an abundance of Bibles and other church supplies. The vast majority of house-churches do not and cannot operate in such an open way. Both of these pastors are elderly, have each spent over 20 years in labor camps, have a localized ministry and are not members of the larger house church networks. Most significantly they both have wide international recognition and so a crackdown on them would provoke an outcry. Consequently, the authorities may deem it easier to allow them to operate and may even use them to show that the religious situation is more open than is the case. 6. The government sanctioned Patriotic Associations for Protestants and Catholics have a comparatively easier time. Many of their members and pastors are sincere Christians. Nevertheless, the underground churches have valid reasons for refusing to accept government control through registration. 7. China's Christian churches, registered and underground, Catholic and Protestant, are experiencing explosive growth. Even the Chinese government figures indicate a seventeen-fold increase for the Patriotic churches from 1979-1996. All the church representatives the Freedom House team spoke with gave reports of a three-to four-fold increase of members since 1990, and a greater than ten-fold increase since 1980. In general there seems to be a growth rate of 15-25 percent of a year. In many areas, the boundaries between registered and underground churches are blurred, as members and even leaders move back and forth between them. Ironically, the very campaign to eradicate the underground churches by the government may be spurring their growth. Underground leaders say that commitment required to practice one's faith in China leads to a strong, disciplined and growing church. Freedom House was founded in 1941 by Eleanor Roosevelt and Wendell Wilkie to arouse Americans against Nazism and communism in Europe. It has been engaged in the promotion of democratic freedoms and human rights around the world for 56 years. Its Puebla Program has reported on religious persecution for over ten years and has conducted several fact-finding missions to China. Puebla Program on Religious Freedom Report on Fact-Finding Mission to China May 11-27, 1997 1. Introduction I, Paul Marshall, am Academic Dean and Senior Fellow in Political Theory at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto, have worked on the issue of religious persecution and human rights for the last fifteen years, and am the author of the recent book, Their Blood Cries Out. I led a three person team to China from May 11 to May 27, 1997, to investigate the situation of the underground churches in China on behalf of the Puebla Program on Religious Freedom at Freedom House. The following is my report: the conclusions are Freedom House's as well as my own. In the following report I have not given the names of our underground interviewees (we said to them that we would not). We have also withheld the names and locations of certain Patriotic churches since we talked to them of their relations with underground churches. 2. The Trip During the trip we spent seven days in Beijing and surrounding rural areas (in two periods of three and four days), three days in Shanghai and surrounding rural areas, and four days in Guangzhou. In this period we visited two Patriotic Catholic churches in Beijing, including the Cathedral, and the Catholic Cathedral in Shanghai, the Mu'en Patriotic Protestant church in Shanghai, and Patriotic churches outside of Shanghai (in towns and villages). We met and interviewed two of the better known "underground" church pastors-Allen Yuan (Yuan Xiangchen) in Beijing and Samuel Lamb (Lin Xiangao) in Guangzhou. In the former we attended a small bible study, in the latter a mid-week service. We also met with more deeply underground Protestant church members in Beijing and Guangzhou. In all we interviewed 15 underground church members, 12 of whom are pastors, evangelists or in other leadership positions. These 12 travel throughout China, and they spoke about the situation in Henan, Hubei, Sichuan, Heilongjiang, Tibet (Xizang), Shanxi, Anhui, Hunan, Shandong, Liaoing, Hebei, Inner Mongolia, Jilin, Guizhou, Beijing, and Shanghai.
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