Recently in Religion Category

By Radio Free Asia
November 30, 2009

A  pastor at an unofficial Protestant church banned from holding indoor meetings by authorities in Shanghai said she would seek compensation for mistreatment by police, as hundreds of the church's followers held an open-air service in one of the city's parks.

Just one week after Shanghai police detained six pastors and organizers of the city's popular but unregistered Wanbang church for several hours, several hundred worshipers gathered Sunday in the city's Minhang Sports Park for an open-air meeting.

"Today we held an open-air service in Minhang Sports Park," the group's leader, Pastor Ren, said.

"It wasn't only prayers. We also held a meeting with preaching. Around 700-800 people were there."

"The police were standing around the edges. There were about 200-300 of them today, the ones wearing uniform. They were uniformed security guards."

Alleged mistreatment

Meanwhile, Wanbang deputy pastor Liu Quanqin said she was mistreated during her detention by officers from Shanghai's Zhuanqiao police station, and had written to demand compensation and an official apology.

"I was praying alone at the hotel at 6:10 p.m., and reading from scripture, and I heard sounds nearby --they were checking all the rooms," she said.

"They knocked on my door and then they used tried to use a key to open the door. It was double-locked, so they just forced it open."

She said police hadn't shown any identification during the detention, then locked her in a room and not allowed her to use the toilet.

"They left me in there for 15 hours," Liu said.

"I asked to go to the bathroom but they wouldn't let me. I asked for some water but they wouldn't give it to me. I was hungry and I asked them for food but they wouldn't let me eat."

Liu said she wrote a complaint letter after she saw a list of rules on the wall of the police station stipulating that police must give food and water to detainees.

She said she was taken to a courtroom but there was no hearing.

Instead, she was pushed, pinched, sworn at, and had her skirt lifted up for "inspection."

She said she had photographic evidence of blood-blisters where she had been pinched.

"The government wants me to stop my activities with the Wanbang church," Liu said. "They say it's an illegal organization."

"I have written an official complaint letter," she said. "I will win redress for this."

Wanbang deputy pastor Cui said it was unclear whether the church would be allowed to move back into its old premises after being expelled by the authorities earlier this month.

"We will have to talk to them about that," he said. "I don't know [if we can go back]. We haven't tried it."

"On the whole, the authorities have been fairly approving of us. They know we are all good people, and pretty trustworthy. The only problem is that we aren't legal [officially approved as a church]. That is where the flashpoint for conflict lies."

Henan intervention

Meanwhile, in the southern province of Henan, the leader of China's Association of House Churches, Pastor Zhang Mingxuan, said police had broken up a prayer meeting he tried to hold on Sunday, attended by around 30 people.

"House" churches, which operate without official registration documents and without the involvement of the local religious affairs bureaus, come in for surveillance and repeated raids, especially in more rural areas of the country, according to overseas rights groups.

Officially an atheist country, China nonetheless has an army of officials whose job is to watch over faith-based activities, which have spread rapidly in the wake of massive social change and economic uncertainty since economic reforms began 30 years ago.

Party officials are put in charge of Catholics, Buddhists, Taoists, Muslims, and Protestants.

Judaism isn't recognized, and worship in unapproved temples, churches, or mosques is against the law.

In its most recent report on human rights in China, the U.S. State Department said freedom of religion is permitted to varying degrees around China.

Original reporting in Mandarin by Qiao Long. Mandarin service director: Jennifer Chou. Translated and written for the Web in English by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.

>> Original report

By Andrew Jacobs | The New York Times
October 31, 2009

A self-taught filmmaker who spent five months interviewing Tibetans about their hopes and frustrations living under Chinese rule is facing charges of state subversion after the footage was smuggled abroad and distributed on the Internet and at film festivals around the world.

The filmmaker, Dhondup Wangchen, who has been detained since March 2008, just weeks after deadly rioting broke out in Tibet, managed to sneak a letter out of jail last month saying that his trial had begun.

"There is no good news I can share with you," he wrote in the letter, which was provided by a cousin in Switzerland. "It is unclear what the sentence will be."

As President Obama prepares for his first trip to China next month, rights advocates are clamoring for his attention in hopes that he will raise the plight of individuals like Mr. Wangchen or broach such thorny topics as free speech, democracy and greater religious freedom.

With hundreds of lawyers, dissidents and journalists serving time in Chinese prisons, human rights organizations are busy lobbying the White House, members of Congress and the news media. In some ways, the pressure has only intensified since Mr. Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, raising expectations for him to carry the torch of human rights.

Lhadon Tethong, executive director of Students for a Free Tibet, said Mr. Obama had an obligation to press Mr. Wangchen's case and the cause of Tibetan autonomy in general, given his decision not to meet the Dalai Lama in Washington this month.

That move, which some viewed as a concession to China, angered critics already displeased with what they say was Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's failure to press human rights during a visit to China in February.

"Beijing is emboldened by such moves," Ms. Tethong said. "They see a weakness in the U.S. government, and they're going to exploit it. This idea that you'll gain more through some backroom secret strategy does not work."

>> Full report

By Radio Free Asia
October 28, 2009

A Chinese student runs into trouble when he refuses to renounce Christianity.

HONG KONG--A high-school student who refused to renounce Christianity has been expelled from a Han Chinese military production corps school in the remote northwestern region of Xinjiang, an overseas rights group said.

Second-year high-school student Chen Le said he was expelled by the Huashan Middle School in the 2nd Agricultural Division of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps on Oct. 20, the U.S.-based China Aid group said in a statement.

"Chen Le ... was found by Bazhou Public Security Agency and other related agencies to have engaged in Christian gatherings," read a copy of the expulsion letter posted on the China Aid Web site.

"Efforts from the class advisor and some leaders from the school in educating him have all failed and this student persists in his belief that he should not renounce his Christian belief," it said.

"Given the above situation, this school advises him to transfer to other related schools," the letter said.

Student refused

The People's Liberation Army production companies, or bingtuan, are units of command that enable Beijing to maintain key areas and exploit rich resources in the largely Muslim northwestern region of Xinjiang.

Mostly Muslim ethnic Uyghurs, who are native to the Xinjiang region, have also complained that young people under 18 have been barred from attending mosques in Xinjiang, and are expected to eat during the holy fasting month of Ramadan.

Chen said he was asked by the head of the agricultural division whether it was true that he had attended Christian meetings. "I just told him the truth," Chen said. "He asked me to write a letter guaranteeing that I wouldn't do it again, but I refused."

"So it took from Oct. 14 to last Tuesday, when the school wrote me a letter telling me to leave," he said.

Communist Youth League

Chen said he told the school he would prefer not to attend school than to write a self-criticism or "examine his error."

"Now I am just sitting at home," he said.

School Party secretary Sun Fu said Chen's Christian beliefs were incompatible with his membership in the Communist Party Youth League.

"He is a member of the League and an official in the student assembly," Sun said.

"We just wanted him to write an ideological report recognizing the problem, because he acts on behalf of the Party in the League."

"That is an atheist organization," Sun said.

"Either that, or he could resign from the League. There are documents about this from the Party Organization Department at the national level. You can look it up yourselves."

But Chen said he had been willing to resign from the League.

"They told me that no student would be allowed to take part in religious activities, and that the school would kick me out," he said.

"I offered to resign from the League, but that I would hold on to my beliefs as was provided for in the Constitution of the People's Republic of China. Citizens are supposed to have the freedom of religious belief," Chen said.

Barred from exams

China Aid said Chen had subsequently also been barred from taking the university entrance exam, crucial for any Chinese student wishing to pursue higher education.

"He was expelled on Oct. 20, and they won't let him attend class," spokesman Bob Fu said.

"This means that he won't get the chance to sit the university entrance examinations."

"The bingtuan are in breach of China's Constitution," he said.

Chen said he wasn't sure what to do about his studies.

"I believe in God, and Jesus, so all I can do is wait and see what God has in store for me," Chen said.

Original reporting in Mandarin by Qiao Long. Mandarin service director: Jennifer Chou. Translated and written for the Web in English by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.

>> Original source

By Brian Womack - Bloomberg.com
21 July 2009

The Chinese government restricted access to more social-networking sites in the past few days, escalating a clampdown that started about six months ago, said Xia Qiang, director of the Berkeley China Internet Project.

The sites that are inaccessible or aren't working properly include Fanfou, Digu, Zuosa and Jiwai, said Qiang, who is an adjunct professor at the University of California at Berkeley in California. Those sites work like Twitter, allowing users to post information quickly before editors can review their submissions, Qiang said.

"It turns out one of the very interesting functions of those sites is the news and opinions is getting circulated very quickly," Qiang said. That makes it much harder for authorities to keep control, he said.

Internet users in China had difficulty logging on to Facebook and other social-networking sites earlier this month following ethnic clashes in western China that left more than 150 people dead. Access to Google Inc.'s YouTube, a video- sharing site, and the Twitter messaging service also has been limited.

When accessed from San Francisco, the Digu and Zuosa Web sites said they were closed for maintenance today, according to postings on their home pages. Fanfou wasn't available as of 11 a.m. San Francisco time. The Web site of Jiwai appeared to be working.

Bing, Twitter

Twitter and Microsoft Corp.'s new Bing.com search engine were inaccessible in Beijing in June, around the time of the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown. Facebook, the most visited social-networking site, continues to receive reports of users having problems accessing the site in China, Debbie Frost, a spokeswoman for Palo Alto, California-based Facebook, said today.

>> Original report

By Sally Sara | ABC - Australian Broadcasting Corporation
July 03, 2009

The Chinese Government has reacted angrily to an Australian parliamentary delegation's visit to meet Tibet's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, in India.

It is the first time a group of Australian MPs and senators has travelled to meet the Tibetan spiritual leader in the Indian hill town of Dharamsala.

The Chinese Embassy in Canberra says the visit constitutes interference in China's internal affairs.

The Dalai Lama says Tibet has been given a death sentence by the Chinese Government.

"No freedom of speech, no freedom of press. Their own people put in dark. It is, I think, immoral," he said.

The Dalai Lama spent more than an hour meeting with members of the first Australian parliamentary delegation to visit him in Dharamsala.

He thanked the all party group of MPs and senators for their support.

"Usually I describe our supporters not like pro-Tibetan, but rather pro-justice," he said.

Labor MP Michael Danby says several members of the delegation are hoping to travel to Tibet later in the year during an official visit to China.

"If the Parliament asks the Chinese Government to allow this group to go, I don't see why they shouldn't be," he said.

"They would be breaking their word and I'm sure the Chinese Government wouldn't like to be seen to be doing that."

The delegation expressed its support for the Dalai Lama's middle way approach of autonomy rather than independence for Tibet.

The Chinese Embassy in Canberra has condemned the Australian visit, saying it constitutes interference in China's internal affairs.

Fifty years after the Dalai Lama fled Tibet, more activists are continuing to arrive in Dharamsala.

The Australian delegation visited a new arrivals centre and met one man who says he was shot by Chinese forces during a protest in March last year.

He told the delegation he thought he was going to die because he was bleeding so heavily.

On Monday, the Dalai Lama will celebrate his 74th birthday and he remains hopeful of returning home.

"Even some of my friends, Tibetan, are now 90 years old. Some, even [though] they [are] also still waiting, one day [will] go back," he said.

"So then I compare them who [are] already in [their] 90s. So I am a bit younger."

>> Original source