CHINA: Religious persecution and issues – Bimonthly Digest November 01-15
General
07.11.2024 – “Red cultural education” for clergy of all religions in China
Bitter Winter – The five authorized religions in China are taking very seriously the instructions of submitting their clergy to “patriotic education,” i.e., the national program of indoctrination introduced by a law that came into force on January 1, 2024. Special guidelines on how religions should implement it were issued on January 4.
It seems that a favorite way for the mandatory indoctrination of the clergy is to organize pilgrimages to the red shrines of the Civil War and of the history of the Communist Party. They are organized at times of traditional religious pilgrimages to effectively replace them. It is also believed that the clergy may like the opportunity to do some tourism and would more easily tolerate boring propaganda lectures if they are alternated with banquets and traveling.
Buddhists
01.11.2024- Authorities confine young monks in ‘prison-like’ conditions in government-run schools
RFA – Hundreds of young Tibetan Buddhist monks from Kirti Monastery who were forcibly transferred in September to government-run boarding schools in Sichuan province’s Ngaba county, are being held in “prison-like conditions” in the schools, two sources from the region said. The students, aged 6-17, are taught exclusively in Mandarin and not permitted to leave the school grounds or meet their parents, said the sources who spoke on condition of anonymity for safety reasons.
Xie Jiao
06.11.2024 – Entire Village of the Yi ethnic minority “Deprogrammed” in Yunnan
Bitter Winter – The Association of Disciples has been added by Chinese authorities to the category of “xie jiao” (“movements spreading heterodox teachings”) regarded as direct threats to national security, a dubious honor it shares with The Church of Almighty God and Falun Gong.
The Association of Disciples (Mentuhui) is also known as “Teachings of the Third Redemption, a name indicating the claim that their doctrine is the third historical source of salvation following Noah’s ark and the cross of Jesus Christ.
The movement was established by Ji Sanbao, a former member of the True Jesus Church, in 1989. It was listed as a “xie jiao” in 1990, and submitted to intense persecution.
Muslims
04.11.2024 – The CCP insists that Chinese Islam should be “confucianized”
Bitter Winter – From October 17 to 18, 2024, the Jiangsu Islamic Association and the Research Center for Strengthening the Consciousness of the Chinese Nation’s Community hosted in Nanjing a conference on the “Research on Integrating Islam and Confucianism and Strengthening the Consciousness of the Chinese Nation’s Community.” The conference was part of a campaign promoting the Jinling School as a model of “Confucianized” Islam.
Catholics
08.11.2024 – China-Vatican provisional agreement: new coadjutor bishop ordained in Beijing diocese after third renewal
China Aid – Matthew Zhen Xuebin, age 54, has become the new Coadjutor Bishop of Beijing as of October 25. He will assist Archbishop Joseph Li Shan, who has led the Catholic community in Beijing since 2007. Matthew Zhen Xuebin’s candidacy was approved within the framework of the provisional agreement between the Holy See and the People’s Republic of China.
Falun Gong
14.11.2024 – 77-year-old woman dies after enduring nine years of wrongful jail time and pension suspension
Minghui – After Ms. Li Shuzhen barely survived a nine-year hellish prison term for her faith in Falun Gong, the Shenyang City, Liaoning Province, resident, continued to face non-stop police harassment. She was dealt another blow when the local social security bureau suspended her pension in 2020, a year after her husband’s cancer diagnosis. She became bedridden following her husband’s death in 2022 and passed away two years later on October 13, 2024. She was 77.
13.11.2024 – 52-year-old man serving 4 years for his faith now in solitary confinement and denied family visits
Minghui – A 52-year-old man serving four years has been placed in solitary confinement and denied family visits in recent days for “making serious mistakes.”
Mr. Han Chunlong of Heishan County, Liaoning Province, was arrested on October 2, 2023, for his faith in Falun Gong, a mind-body practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since July 1999. He was sentenced to four years and fined 30,000 yuan on March 25, 2024. The Shenyang City Intermediate Court rejected his appeal on an unknown date, and he was admitted to Division Nine of Jinzhou Prison in August 2024.
10.11.2024 – After nearly five years behind bars, 75-year-old Hunan woman arrested again for her faith
Minghui – A 75-year-old resident of Yueyang City, Hunan Province was arrested on October 30, 2024, while distributing calendars bearing information about the Chinese Communist Party’s persecution of Falun Gong.
Officers from the Yueyang City Domestic Security Division took Ms. Cai Guijiao to the Yueyang City Detention Center. She became seriously ill three days later and was admitted to the Guangji Hospital, a private institution owned by retired police officers. It is unclear whether she is still hospitalized at this time.
Protestants
13.11.2024 – Hunan’s Changsha Grace Light Church raided by police
Bitter Winter – The name of Changsha Grace Light Church in Changsha, Hunan, is well-known in the world of Chinese independent house churches. It has now been raided again.
Changsha Christian Presbyterian Church was founded by foreign missionaries in Qing Imperial China. It continued its activities until it was forcibly incorporated into the government-controlled Three-Self Church in Mao’s years. However, a group including blind and deaf-mute believers resisted the move and continued as a clandestine house church. Eventually, it merged with other house churches in Changsha to form the Grace Light Church, under the leadership of a blind Christian named Zhang Zhongliang.
11.11.2024 – Nation-wide persecution faced by Fujian Putian Puguang church, Chengdu Early rain Covenant Church and Changsha Grace Light Church.
China Aid – On November 10, 2024, Putian Puguang Church in Fujian was stormed during Sunday worship, and three pastors from the church, Hong Qiuyong, Wu Gelan, Song Zhiguang, and three other staffs, a total of six people, are still being detained at the police station.
08.11.2024 – Chinese House Church christians face gestapo-like surveillance and persecution
China Aid – Recently, China’s national security agents have been acting like Gestapo officers, infiltrating and monitoring every detail of Chinese citizens’ lives.
On October 30, 2024, at around 8:30 AM, while a brother from the Linfen Holy Covenant Church was reading the Bible and praying with his family, a group of police suddenly knocked on the door urgently. When asked to show their police credentials, an officer went downstairs to retrieve one, claiming that the person named Li Hui on the ID was their supervisor.
01.11.2024 – Zhu Bin: Co-founder of Christian School released on bail but kept under surveillance
Bitter Winter – On October 29, 2024, Beijing Christian activist Zhu Bin was released on bail but told he will be kept under surveillance for one year.
Zhu Bin, a Christian activist and dissident, co-founded Beijing Special Children School. He was detained by the Haidian Branch of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau on September 29, 2024, for “inciting disturbances” and taken to the Haidian District Detention Center.
Zhu was born in Fu’an, Fujian Province, on February 24, 1973. His school, founded in 2017 and independent of the Three Self Church, has faced harassment and raids repeatedly.