China persecuting Christians: report

Evangelical group says Beijing choking dissent with worsening crackdown on church leaders, educators

Charles Lewis, Canwest News Service, Canada, Wednesday, June 11, 2008-

TORONTO — China is increasing its persecution of Christians as a way of stamping out dissent in the run-up to the Beijing Olympic Games, a new report says.

“Behind the buzz of the Olympic-ready nation lie unacceptable incidents of persecution, torture and death. The Communist Party of China (CPC) has worked tirelessly to subdue any perceived form of criticism that may damage the image they have worked hard to develop,” the report by the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada states.

“The CPC has a history of using unjust means to prevent international embarrassment and to cover up their records of abuse.”

It also said that the volume of arrests for religious dissidents has increased.

The report is based on information relayed by people in China and data of other monitoring agencies.

“An indicator of things getting worse is the fact that we’ve seen policy strategies within the Communist party change in order to continue persecuting Christians but by different ways,” said Jocelyn Durston, an author of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada report.

“Shortly after 2004, there was a large crackdown on large churches and that got a lot of media attention so they stopped arresting Christians in that manner. Now they’ve targeted church leaders and leaders in training” as a way to scare ordinary Christians.

While a number of religious groups face persecution, Tuesday’s report focussed on the Protestant House Church Movement — Protestants who meet in private residences so they are not subject to the rules of the Communist party.

“Most of the coverage of religious persecution has focussed on other faith communities,” said Don Hutchinson, another author of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada report.

“The Chinese government has done a very good job of propagandizing the concept that there is a free Protestant church in China. And so they’ve created this false impression that Protestants are doing OK and the reality is they are just as heavily persecuted as any other group.”

Earlier this year, a report from Hudson Institute, called Religious Freedom in the World, noted there are five authorized religions in China — Protestantism, Catholicism, Buddhism, Islam and Taoism — that are controlled by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, which in turn is under Central Committee of the Community Party. Members of the Communist party must be atheists.

- Original from Vancouver Sun