China Detains Two Underground Catholic Priests
Reuters | The Epoch Times International
February 25, 2006
BEIJING — Chinese police detained two underground Roman Catholic priests this week and has held a 70-year-old bishop for three months, the U.S.-based Cardinal Kung Foundation said.
Word of the Feb. 17 detentions of Lu Genjun, 44, and Guo Yanli, 39, while waiting for a friend at a train station in Baoding in northern Hebei province, came ahead of a visit to the United States by President Hu Jintao, expected in April.
It is unclear why the pair were taken into custody. Lu was being held at an undisclosed location, while Guo was sent to a detention centre in Xushui county, the foundation said in a statement seen on Friday.
Beijing has had no ties with the Vatican since 1951 and insists relations cannot be resumed unless the Holy See severs links with self-ruled Taiwan, which China has claimed as its own since their split at the end of their civil war in 1949.
China says its Catholics must belong to a state-backed church that does not recognise the Pope's authority. The United States has often criticised China for its intolerance of religion.
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I thought the freedom to practise one's religion was guaranteed under the PRC constitution?(along with freedom of association).
Scant regard for the law seems to be the order of the day.
It's in the Constitution but when does the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) ever follow the rules...look at what they're doing to the Falun Gong. Here's a spiritual faith that believes in Truth-Compassion-Tolerance, quite benign with no political agenda. But the CCP has been torturing and murdering them for 7 years because they refuse to give up their beliefs and has called Falung Gong a cult(actually, the CCP call everything a cult). And just lately, the news of a secret death camp holding up to 6000 Falun Gong practitioners was revealed where they harvest their organs for profit. The Falun Gong are then sent 'alive' to the crematorium after the organs are harvested to hide all evidence. Is this what the CCP calls freedom of belief? They've used over 100 methods of torture on the Christians as well. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. The CCP have to be stopped from committing such hainous crimes against humanity.