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Wednesday, February 18, 2004 |
CHINA: CHURCH DEMOLITION AND ARRESTS - REQUESTING PRAYER FOR CHINA
By Elizabeth Kendal
World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty Commission
Special to ASSIST News Service
AUSTRALIA (ANS) -- At 4 a.m. on 26 June 2003, police arrived at the Tu Du Sha Church at Xiaoshan District of Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province, with orders to bulldoze and demolish the church. They had expected the church to be empty, and so were surprised to find a group of some 300 believers praying. They left and returned at 8:00 a.m. with 200 military policemen. Despite the protests of believers, the police demolished the church, which was started around 1930 by Hudson Taylor’s China Inland Mission, and had grown in size to a weekly attendance of 1,500 members. Unbeknown to the police, a believer managed to record the demolition on video. That video was smuggled out of China to Voice of the Martyrs. http://www.persecution.com/china In January 2004, Chinese government officials saw the video and launched a fresh crackdown on the house-churches.
The Church is growing in China at an amazing rate. The only churches the government permits are the government controlled Three Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) churches. By having Christians in TSPM churches, the government can control what they are taught (a ‘Christianity that is compatible with Marxism’), who they are taught by (government appointed preachers), and who gets taught (no one under the age of 18). The presence of the TSPM churches also enables the Chinese government to present a façade of religious liberty. Some 80 million Chinese believers reject this system and chose to worship in unregistered ‘house-churches’. Unregistered worship is illegal, and believers, especially pastors and evangelists, face violent persecution if arrested.
On the evening of 24 January, house-church leader Ms. Qiao Chunling (41) of Fangcheng city, Henan province, was arrested during a house-church service at Guanlin, Luoyang city. Mr Zeng Guangbo (35), a Beijing military policeman and now prominent house-church leader in the Born Again Movement, was arrested on 25 January at a house church at Zengzhuang village, Yuanzhuang town, Deng county, Henan province. He has since escaped custody and is in hiding.
Ms. Xu Yongling (‘Deborah’ Xu, 58) was arrested from her niece’s home at 11 p.m. on 25 January. Deborah Xu is the younger sister of prominent house-church leader Peter Xu Yongze, who now lives in the U.S.A. Deborah is the present leader of Peter Xu’s ‘Born Again Movement’ church, which has millions of members throughout China. She has been arrested many times in the past. She is also actively involved with the burgeoning Chinese missionary movement. No one has been able to get any information concerning Deborah Xu’s whereabouts. Police in Nanyang will not even say if she has been charged with anything. A relative was told however, that told Deborah Xu’s case is being handled by the Chinese federal government’s Department of State Security. {more]
9:15:57 AM 
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HEART FOR NORTH KOREAN REFUGEES LEADS TO RUSSIAN BORDER
By Mark Ellis
Senior Correspondent, ASSIST News Service
ARTESIA, CALIFORNIA (ANS) -- Kicked out by the government of Mongolia, he wages a steadfast effort to assist North Korean refugees throughout Southeast Asia in their quest for eventual freedom. But increasingly, his attention is focused on a tiny stretch of depopulated area in eastern Russia that may offer hope to these refugees.
“There are 250,000 North Korean refugees who have left the country in the last eight years,” says Douglas Shin, 49, founder of Exodus21. “It’s like illegal Hispanic workers crossing the U.S. border, but there is a difference,” he says. “When they are sent back they are severely punished, especially if they met with missionaries.”
The North Korean authorities view any exposure to Christianity as a potential seed of rebellion. “Christianity is supposed to be the enemy,” Shin says.
Until the year 2000, Shin saw the refugee problem was mostly unreported. “Now the ripple effect has reached East Coast politicians,” he says. Now they realize North Korea “not only has nukes, but it also produces refugees.”
Shin was one of the first builders of the underground railroad for North Korean refugees to Mongolia. “The Mongolians said they couldn’t allow us to do that because of Chinese pressure,” he says. Jailed twice, he was eventually deported and can’t return, but that doesn’t stop him from finding other avenues to freedom.
He is currently excited about an area of land almost invisible on world atlases. “Russia shares a border with North Korea for only about 20 miles,” Shin says. “There are very few people living in this area,” he says. “The Russians are leaving in droves—they all want to go to Moscow to become part of the new Russia.”
Even though there is a labor drain in the area, there is a pressing demand for cheap labor for gas and oil development projects, as well as expansion of the Trans-Siberian Railroad. “These are two big gold mines for the coming century,” Shin believes. “To man these two historical projects they don’t have enough people,” he says.
“The Russian Governor of the Maritime Provinces, Sergei Dirkin, said to the press and to a congressional delegation from the U.S. that he will take North Korean refugees,” Shin reports. Partly in response to this opening, The North Korean Freedom Act was introduced to the U.S. Congress in November 2003. “It would provide $20 million in funding for North Korean refugee camps,” Shin says.
Unfortunately, the bill is currently stalled. “It hasn’t passed—it’s in limbo,” Shin says. He hopes the refugee drain in North Korea will produce the same effect it had in East Germany. “East Germany collapsed after there was an exodus of people in 1988,” he says. “If one percent of the people leave who are needed to run the society the regime should collapse. Remember, there was no uprising in East Germany.”
“People left, and they couldn’t run it anymore,” he adds.
After Shin was deported from Mongolia, he began assisting refugees in Southeast Asia. “I help in other ways along the Southeastern route through Laos and Thailand,” he says. “About 4,000 North Koreans refugees have made it to freedom in South Korea out of about 250,000 in China,” he reports.
“Last summer I tried to launch 700 AM-FM radios by balloon from the DMZ,” Shin says. “We were blocked by the South Korean police because it wasn’t politically correct,” he says. Shin is currently searching for an alternative launch platform for his balloons, possibly a large boat.
Shin sees a historic change afoot in the attitudes of the South Korean people. “South Korea is turning away from the U.S. and away from its traditional anti-communist policy,” he believes. “You see anti-American demonstrations on TV from Seoul,” he says. “It’s like Iran in the late 1970s.”
“Even three to five years ago it was safe for Americans to walk around,” Shin observes. “Now it’s dangerous to walk around town by yourself—especially for U.S. servicemen.”
Politically, the situation has changed. “The only ally the North Koreans can rely on is South Korea, where the conservative government has been replaced by a more left-leaning socialist government,” Shin says.
“North Korea is at the end of its rope,” he says. “After the global collapse of communism North Korea lost all of its trading partners. So they created the first nuclear crisis in 1994. The U.S. supplied a half million tons of fuel oil—they got paid well for their blackmail.”
Despite the political quagmire, Shin continues to do his part to help refugees. “My heart goes out to the poor people in North and South Korea,” he says. “They are becoming victims of these different governments.”
9:09:38 AM
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BELARUS: More Baptist pastors fined |
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By Geraldine Fagan, Forum 18 News Service |
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Forum 18 News Service has learnt of further recent incidents in which unregistered Baptist pastors have been fined for holding worship services. The fines were issued under the Belarusian administrative offences code, which punishes "the creation and leadership of a religious organisation without registering its charter (statutes) in accordance with established procedure." The estimated 29 congregations in Belarus belonging to a Moscow-based Baptist union which rejects state registration on principle have increasingly been targeted in this way since the introduction of the republic's 2002 religion law. The law explicitly states that registration is compulsory for all religious communities. [read more...] |
9:03:19 AM
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© 2004 Radio Free China
Last Update: 4/4/2004; 9:39:57 AM
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