Reports of Persecution in China Continue After Bush Visit
(CNSNews.com) - Reports of religious persecution continue to emerge from China, shortly after President Bush visited the region and urged the communist government to allow its people the right "to worship without state control."Authorities reportedly have arrested more Roman Catholic priests, while in Tibet, Buddhist monks were arrested amid a government drive to pacify the occupied region.
The State Department and religious rights campaigners say Beijing clamps down on Buddhists and Muslims in Tibet and Xinjiang; suppresses groups like the outlawed Falun Gong; and tries to channel Christian observance through two permitted "patriotic" organizations, one Catholic and one Protestant.
Millions of Christians shun the state bodies, choosing to remain unregistered and worship in secret -- in "underground" Protestant house churches or Catholic congregations loyal to the Vatican.
Beijing has no diplomatic ties with the Vatican, and it expects Chinese Catholics to pay allegiance to the patriotic Catholic organization rather than the Pope.
The Cardinal Kung Foundation, a U.S.-based group focusing on persecuted Catholics in China, reports that another six underground Catholic priests in Hebei province have been arrested. Two of them, both in their 50s, were badly beaten, said the organization's president, Joseph Kung.
The six belong to the diocese headed by Bishop Jia Zhiguo, who was himself arrested earlier this month. The 70-year-old bishop has been arrested at least eight times since 2004, and has spent some 20 years in Chinese prisons.
Campaigners say the government uses "study sessions" -- indoctrination -- to pressure such men to register with the state-sanctioned association.
"Obviously, the intensified horror campaign by the Chinese government to force the underground church religious and faithful to register with the official patriotic church is actively ongoing," said Kung.
The priests were arrested on Nov. 18, two days after Bush delivered a speech in Japan urging China to respect human rights, particularly the freedom to worship.
The president then visited China, where he attended a service at a patriotic Protestant church, and said afterwards a healthy society was one which "welcomes all faiths."
Later the same day, Bush said he had raised religious freedom in talks with President Hu Jintao, including cases of improper imprisonment, the situation regarding the Catholic Church and the Vatican, and Tibet.
China has occupied the Himalayan region since 1951, and refuses to deal with the Tibetan Buddhist leader, the Dalai Lama, whose government-in-exile is based in Dharamsala, India. Bush said he urged Hu to talk to the exiled leader about Tibet's future.
China says its administration has been good for Tibet economically and socially, but campaigners for Tibetan independence say the region is being swamped by ethnic Chinese and its culture and religion threatened by Beijing's control.
On Nov. 23, two days after Bush had left China, security bureau officials arrested five monks based at an historic monastery in Lhasa, according to Radio Free Asia (RFA), citing sources inside China.
"Chinese security officials also secured the [Drepung] monastery, stopping all incoming and outgoing traffic," it said, attributing the actions to "an intensified campaign to crack down on followers of the Dalai Lama."
More details came from the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD), which said monks at Drepung have refused official orders to sign a document denouncing the Dalai Lama as a "separatist."
It said Beijing has instituted a "patriotic education" campaign aimed at boosting support among Buddhist monks for the Chinese government.
The center, a non-governmental organization based in Dharamsala, said the arrests sparked a rare protest by more than 400 monks - a silent sit-in in the monastery courtyard. They refused to criticize the religious leader and demanded the release of their five colleagues.
Police and soldiers had then been called in, and violently dispelled the protestors, it said.
The TCHRD said Hu's recent assurances to Bush about improving human rights "seem empty promises in the face of severe restrictive measures imposed on one of the most reputed religious centers in Tibet."
Religious freedom groups did report some good news from Bush's visit. Voice of the Martyrs reports that the day after Bush attended church in Beijing, the authorities released a house church leader, pastor Zhang Mingxuan.
Zhang, who is chairman of the China House Church Alliance, had been detained with his son several days earlier, and taken from Beijing to another city thousands of kilometers away.
Voice of the Martyrs said eight house church leaders in Henan province had also been freed, on the same day Bush arrived in the Chinese capital - and just hours after the Texas-based China Aid Association issued a statement about their arrests. Two of the eight reported having been tortured while in custody.
See related story:
US Evangelist Regrets Remarks on Religious Freedom in China (Nov. 30, 2005)
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