Author: Tony Carnes
Publication: Christianity Today,
March 11, 2002 edition
Date: February 15, 2002
Top communists, despite their denials,
endorse arrest and torture of Chinese Christians by the thousands.
A Chinese Christian refugee in New
York, working with Christians in China, has compiled an extensive new archive
documenting brutal religious persecution that has caused more than 100
deaths and thousands of injuries.
Activist Li Shi-xiong, head of the
New York City-based Committee for Investigation on Persecution of Religion
in China, believes these documents establish that communist rulers at the
highest levels take an active role in persecuting house-church Christians.
In the past, top leaders in China have blamed repression on overzealous
local officials.
The New York committee timed its
unveiling of the archive to influence President Bush during his February
trip to China.
[Note: Bush leaves today for Japan,
South Korea and China.]
The archive is a 10-foot-high stack
of 22,000 testimonies about persecution of Chinese Christians. It includes
court transcripts, internal government documents, and photographs. Experts
call it the largest collection ever assembled on the persecuted church
in China.
"The secret documents alone are
extremely rare and incredibly important," says Carol Hamrin, a star China
analyst who recently retired from the State Department. The mammoth collection,
which Li calls a "truth bomb," includes 5,000 detailed testimonies of Chinese
Christians describing their arrests, interrogations, and jailings. Many
accounts include photographs of the persecuted believers, including injuries
they suffered while in custody. Some case files include official arrest
and court records. The largest number of testimonies comes from central
Henan Province, where persecution has dramatically escalated since 1999.
Li's group has also collected partial reports on 17,000 others, mostly
Christians, persecuted for their religious beliefs.
Li is also documenting the cases
of 117 religious people who have died while in official custody, 700 who
have been put in labor camps, and 550 who are wanted by the police but
are in hiding. He is also investigating 300 police officers accused of
being especially abusive.
Freedom House's Nina Shea has written
that Li's archive is a "tremendous work." Shea, a member of the U.S. Commission
on International Religious Freedom, marvels at Li's "dedication to the
cause of religious freedom and his amazing work in the documentation of
so many thousands of cases of the persecution of China's Christians." Freedom
House, an advocacy organization founded in 1941 by Eleanor Roosevelt, plans
to make extensive use of the archive.
China scholar Brent Fulton, head
of China Source in Los Angeles, is aware of the archive but has not examined
its contents. He says the documents indicate the "degree of seriousness"
with which China approaches unregistered religious groups. "They see the
unregistered groups as a national security threat."
Li and the New York committee believe
that going public with the archive will build international political pressure
on China's leaders to end their repression of religion. Fulton foresees
the government searching for those who leaked the documents. He also expects
more crackdowns. But, he says, "The long-term response to the release of
these papers will be good."
A Sensitive Time
The revelation of the archive comes
at a sensitive time for China. Political leaders say that the nation of
1.3 billion people faces wrenching changes related to its entrance into
the World Trade Organization (WTO) last December. WTO membership will lower
trade barriers, enabling China to compete for trade on a more level playing
field. Certain parts of China's economy, such as high tech, are expected
to do well. Others, such as the inefficient and subsidized industrial and
agricultural sectors, may be pummeled. Millions of unskilled laborers could
be thrown out of work.
Seeking to maintain its grip on
society, the Chinese government since 1999 has been waging a campaign against
"cults," such as the Falun Gong movement. (Falun Gong adherents use physical
exercise as a spiritual discipline.) China's officials are trying now to
eliminate what they consider undesirable movements, because WTO membership
will bring additional international pressure on China to improve its poor
record on human rights. "[China's] officials spell out that the anti-cult
campaign is a preparation for the further opening of society because of
China joining the World Trade Organization," Hamrin says. But, Fulton adds,
"There are in fact a lot of cult groups that are doing bad things."
Says Eric Burklin, president of
Colorado-based China Partner, "China wants to have a positive image with
the rest of the world. The government can't really discern the cults from
the non-cults because [China's top leaders] are atheistic."
The archive makes it clear that
repression of religion is official state policy at the highest levels -
not merely a local and sporadic phenomenon, as China usually claims. In
the documents, officials say the cults are "soaking into" and weakening
the foundations of state authority. Officials link rising religious influence
to the increased influence of Western cultural values of democracy and
equality.
In public, Chinese leaders are vague
on what actually constitutes a cult. "Cults are not religions," Premier
Zhu Rong Ji said in a December meeting on religion. Critics say this approach
allows authorities to crack down on any groups they do not like - including
many house churches. These churches typically do not register with the
government-sponsored Three-Self Patriotic Movement.
While there is no consensus on the
number of Christians in China, Operation World estimates the presence of
45 million people in house churches and another 40 million members and
adherents in the official church. There are about 12 million Catholics
in China, in both state and unofficial groups.
Hamrin, who favors improving trade
relations with China, says that this latest government repression will
worsen matters. "This massive campaign against millions of their people
will exacerbate social tensions."
Aggressive Actions
In a recent public pronouncement,
China's government declared that religion has never fared better. Ye Xiaowen,
the head of the Religious Affairs Bureau, toured the United States last
year. Ye claimed that the government had initiated a "golden time" for
religion. China's president, Jiang Zemin, recently told a U.S. congressional
delegation in Beijing, "I am looking forward to seeing a church on one
side of every village and a mosque on the other side."
During the second week of December,
top communist leaders gathered in Beijing to discuss religion policy. Jiang
led off with a speech declaring, "The influence of religion on political
and social lives in today's world should never be underestimated."
In lower-profile gatherings, however,
the talk tilts toward intensive surveillance of religion, according to
Li's archival materials. In a speech, a local public security official
in charge of religion quoted Hu Jintao, likely to be the next leader of
China, on the proper approach to a "cult": "Watch and follow its direction
and deal with it by law at the proper time." As the orders filter down,
local leaders often act aggressively. A provincial security chief says,
"Talk less and smash the cult quietly."
Li's archive documents how the anti-cult
campaign was quickly broadened to include many well-known Protestant groups.
In just one example, on August 18, 2001, authorities raided three offices
of the South China Church. They arrested 14 people, using fists and electric
clubs to obtain accusations against the pastor.
"The central government is defining
whole groups as targets of extreme measures," says Hamrin, who produced
the U.S. State Department's first annual reports on religious freedom and
persecution in China. For example, more than 300 Chinese associated with
the Falun Gong movement have died while in China's custody.
Increasingly, groups are targeted
not just for breaking civil laws on registration and holding unauthorized
meetings, but for their beliefs and religious doctrine. The government,
the archive shows, especially dislikes preaching about "the end of the
world" or teaching that "the Lord can heal a person of disease."
According to the archive, the Ministry
of Public Security spells out five characteristics of a cult, ranging from
the clearly defined "deifying its top leader" to the grab bag of "stirring
up and deceiving others." (See below)
The documents show that officials
are especially wary of unregistered church groups that attempt to link
with other unregistered groups. In such cases, the archive shows, officials
are returning to the fierce battles from the era of Mao Zedong, China's
first communist ruler, from 50 years ago. This has led to tremendous abuses.
In April 2000, officials put Peter Xu's Born Again Movement on their cult
list. Officials set quotas for arrests, putting pressure on local police
to obtain confessions. Police often beat, slap, and use electric shocks
to obtain those confessions.
Leaders of the large South China
Church organization also have been hit hard by recent arrests. A document
from a police official in the provincial religion office hints that poorly
trained police in Hebei Province are resorting to abusive interrogation
methods instead of quiet information-gathering. The archive reveals several
recent cases of local police trying to bribe the families of people they
had killed under interrogation. Leaders of the South China Church report,
"On July 20, 2001, we heard the news that Yu Zongju was tortured to death.
The police did not inform her family until her body started to smell. They
asked her family to meet them in a restaurant. They paid them $8,000 and
warned them to keep quiet."
Christian Networks "Mutate"
Last year, the Bush administration
sponsored a resolution for the United Nations Commission on Human Rights
that condemned Beijing's human rights record. Amnesty International reported
in 2001 that China's use of torture was widespread and systematic.
China analysts such as Hamrin say
that the Chinese government, wishing to improve its image internationally,
probably will respond favorably to pressure to improve human rights.
"China has really developed and
they have tasted too much freedom to go back," says Eric Burklin of China
Partner. "There would be major bloodshed if they tried to go back to Maoist
times."
But Li's archive shows that China's
emerging strategy for dealing with the house-church movement is comprehensive
and difficult for outsiders to counter. Officials gain access through informants,
harass leaders, block communication, and strip churches of financial assets,
including church buildings and homes.
The government notes in the documents
that house-church Christians already have a means to resist these new efforts
at repression. House-church leaders reportedly are creating networks that
constantly mutate. Leaders communicate with wireless phones and hard-to-trace
Web sites. In response, the government has begun building a national computer
network known as the "Golden Shield" in order to conduct Internet surveillance
and information-gathering.
Meanwhile, the impact of Li's archives
promises to be seismic. "It's a bombshell," Shea says.
