China closes 48 churches after lifting lockdown
In China, the communist government intensified the controll of churches again. This happened after they softened the lockdown due to Covid-19. According to reports, in the southeastern province of Jiangxi, the Chinese authorities closed many churches and removed crosses from their rooftops.
Between April 18 and 30, authorities closed around 48 Three-Self churches and meeting venues in Yugan county, according to Bitter Winter, an Italy-based online magazine on religious liberty and human rights in China, published by the Center for Studies on New Religions.
According to the testimony of a member of a local Three-Self church some officials of the Shegeng town, including the mayor, stormed the church and forcibly removed its podium, cross and all other religious symbols. This occurred in April.
“Some congregation members wept in distress. If you try to protest, they will accuse you of fighting against the Communist Party and the central government,” the believer said.
A believer in Yugan’s Daxi township told the magazine that a village Party secretary told area Christians that authorities wanted to close churches because “there were too many believers in the county.”
“When so many believe in God, who will listen to the Communist Party? There is no other choice but to remove crosses from your churches,” he quoted the secretary as saying.
In relation to persecution of Christians, On Open Doors USA’s World Watch List, shows that China is one of the worst countries in the world.
The organization says that the government eliminate all that they perceive against their beliefs or standards.
The Chinese Communist Party consider illegal all churches that are outside of the government-controlled Movement. For this reason, they persecute them more severely.
Gina Goh, a regional manager for Southeast Asia at International Christian Concern, recently said that China has clearly resumed its crackdown on Christianity after the threat posed by the coronavirus pandemic has reduced.
“In recent weeks, we have seen an increased number of church demolitions and cross removals on state-sanctioned churches across China, as house church gatherings continue to face interruption and harassment. It is deplorable that the local authorities not only conducted this raid without proper procedure but deployed excessive use of force against church members and bystanders,” she said.
The crackdown on churches has been underway since before the pandemic began.
David Curry, president and CEO of Open Doors USA who was in China on a fact-finding trip days before COVID-19 emerged from Wuhan province, “witnessed firsthand how the Chinese government is using mass surveillance and data modeling to monitor and punish citizens who choose to attend church or share religious material.”
“The forced closure of thousands of churches and the removal of crosses from buildings are now-commonplace tactics by the Chinese government in order to limit, if not extinguish, Christian practice,” Curry wrote in an op-ed for The Christian Post. Even charitable coronavirus relief provided by people of faith is strongly discouraged by the regime.
In November, government officials ordered the removal of the cross from the Ranfang Church in Gushi county in the central province of Henan, telling believers that it’s “the Communist Party that gives you food and money, not God.”
Source: The Christian Post
