Chinese Christians Blocked from Attending Lausanne Congress

Police threaten or detain some 200 house church members who planned to attend.

DUBLIN, October 15 (CDN) — As organizers prepared for the opening of the Third Lausanne International Congress on World Evangelization tomorrow in Cape Town, South Africa, Chinese police threatened or detained some 200 delegates who had hoped to attend.

After receiving an invitation to attend the event, house church groups in China formed a selection committee and raised significant funds to pay the expenses of their chosen delegates, a source told Compass. Many delegates, however, were “interviewed” by authorities after they applied to attend the Congress, the source said.

When house church member Abraham Liu Guan and four other delegates attempted to leave China via Beijing airport on Sunday (Oct. 10), authorities refused to allow them through customs, reported the Chinese-language Ming Pao News. Officials detained one delegate and confiscated the passports of the other four until Oct. 25, the closing date of the conference.

China’s State Administration for Religious Affairs and the Ministry of Public Security had notified border control staff that the participation of Chinese Christians in the conference threatened state security and ordered them not to allow delegates to leave, Liu told U.S.-based National Public Radio (NPR).

Officials also prevented two house church Christians from Baotou City, Inner Mongolia, from leaving the country, and on Oct. 9 placed one of them in a 15-day detention, the China Aid Association (CAA) reported.

When Fan Yafeng, leader of the Chinese Christian Legal Defense Association and winner of the 2009 John Leland Religious Liberty Award, discussed the harassment with NPR on Tuesday (Oct. 12), officials assigned some 20 police officers to keep him under house arrest.

On Wednesday (Oct. 13), approximately 1,000 police officers were stationed at Beijing International Airport to restrain an estimated 100 house church members who planned to leave for the Congress via Beijing, according to CAA.

CAA also said authorities over the past few months had contacted every delegate, from Han Christians in Beijing to Uyghur Christians in Xinjiang, for questioning, and threatened some family members.

Normal church operations were also affected. The Rev. Xing Jingfu from Changsha in Hunan province told NPR that authorities cited the Lausanne Congress when they recently ordered his church to close.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Ma Zhaoxu, in a statement issued to NPR, accused the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization of communicating secretively with members of illegal congregations and not issuing an official invitation to China’s state-controlled church.

According to the Ming Pao report, the Lausanne committee said members of the Three-Self Protestant Movement had asked if they could attend. Delegates, however, were required to sign a document expressing their commitment to evangelism, which members of official churches could not do due to regulations such as an upper limit on the number of people in each church, state certification for preachers, and the confinement of preaching to designated churches in designated areas. House church Christians faced no such limitations.

The first such conference was held in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1974, which produced the influential Lausanne Covenant. The second conference was held in 1989 in Manila. Some 4,000 delegates from 200 countries are expected to attend the third conference in Cape Town.

 

Progress or Repression?

China watchers said there has been a slight easing of restrictions in recent months, accompanied by a call on Sept. 28 from senior Chinese political advisor Du Qinglin for the government to allow the independent development of the official church. Du made the remarks at the 60th anniversary celebrations of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, according to the government-allied Xinhua news agency.

The BBC in August produced a glowing series on the growth of Christianity in China after Chinese authorities gave it unprecedented access to state-sanctioned churches and religious institutions. Religious rights monitor Elizabeth Kendal, however, described this access as part of a propaganda campaign by the Chinese government to reduce criticism of religious freedom policies.

NPR also produced a five-part series on Chinese religions in July. The series attributed the growth of religious adherence to the “collapse of Communist ideology” and pointed out that growth continued despite the fact that evangelism was “still illegal in China today.”

The claims of progress were challenged by an open letter from Pastor Zhang Mingxuan, president of the Chinese Christian House Church Alliance, to Chinese President Hu Jintao on Oct. 1, China’s National Day.

In the letter, published by CAA on Oct. 5, Zhang claimed that Chinese house church Christians respected the law and were “model citizens,” and yet they had become “the target of a group of government bandits … [who] often arrest and beat innocent Christians and wronged citizens.” Further, he added, “House church Christians have been ill-treated simply because they are petitioners to crimes of the government.”

Zhang then listed several recent incidents in which Christians were arrested and sent to labor camps, detained and fined without cause, beaten, interrogated and otherwise abused. He also described the closure or demolition of house churches and the confiscation of personal and church property.

He closed with a mention of Uyghur Christian Alimjan Yimit, “who was sentenced to 15 years in prison because he evangelized among Uyghurs – his very own people.”

Report from Compass Direct News

NIGERIA: MUSLIM EXTREMISTS BURN CHURCH BUILDING

Saying it was too close to a mosque, Islamists destroy sanctuary in Kwara state.

ILORIN, Nigeria, September 2 (Compass Direct News) – Muslim extremists on Sunday (Aug. 31) set ablaze a church building in the Baboko area of this city in central Nigeria’s Kwara state.

The Rev. Samuel Ogowole told Compass that the extremists barred members of his Christ Apostolic Church (CAC) from getting to the building on Sunday, and the Town Planning Development Authority had sealed off the premises following pressure from area Muslims. The congregation had gone to a site on the outskirts of the city for worship when the Muslim extremists destroyed the church building, a 20 million naira (US$170,575) structure built four years ago.

Rev. Ogowole told Compass that area Muslims had complained that the church building is located near a mosque. Compass found that the church building was 500 meters from the Baboko mosque.

Muslim leaders had filed a complaint with an interfaith panel called the Inter-Religious Committee, established by the Kwara state government to mediate Muslim-Christian conflicts. Rev. Ogowole said the body initially ruled against the Islamists’ claim, but under Muslim pressure later issued a second resolution ordering the church to relocate.

“The Inter-Religious committee after investigating the issue explained that it is not true that our church is close to the mosque, and as such there is no justification of the claims of the Muslims,” he said. “But the Muslims still have not allowed us to worship here in peace.”

To appease the Muslim community, Rev. Ogowole said, the Kwara state government offered church leaders 3 million naira (US$25,580) and ordered the congregation to relocate. Church leaders rejected the order, saying they had spent nearly seven times that much to construct the church building.

Muslims had objected to the church building soon after construction began in 2001 on property that the church had legally purchased. Rev. Ogowole told Compass that Muslims initially applied pressure on town planning authorities in 2005.

“This ultimately resulted in a relocation notice, asking us to relocate the church out of the area in seven days,” he said. “However, we objected to the relocation order. Our position was that relocating to another place would mean creating hardship for our members here, who would have to travel many kilometers in order to worship.”

The Rev. Cornelius Fawenu, secretary of the Kwara state chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), told reporters yesterday that a review of the inter-religious committee’s ruling is under discussion by panel members and leaders of CAN and the church.

“Both CAN and the church are currently dialoguing on the review of the final resolution with the committee on the matter, all in the interest of equity, justice and fairness, even though the committee had earlier resolved in favor of the church before the twist of events necessitated a second resolution, which we have since appealed against,” Rev. Fawenu said.

The building had been constructed with approval from the Kwara state government, which issued a right of occupancy certificate to the church. Compass obtained property documents from church leaders showing the legality of the building: the certificate of right of occupancy, an Environmental Impact Assessment report, town planning approval and certification and land rental fees that to date were all paid.

 

Second Attack

Sunday marked the second time that Muslim fanatics attacked the church. On June 16, they broke into the church sanctuary, destroying musical instruments, burning pews and pulling down part of a fence around the premises.

The fanatics also wrote Islamic inscriptions on the church gate. Rev. Ogowole told Compass church leaders reported the incident to the police.

“A bag containing Islamic items was recovered by the police the following morning in the church premises,” he said.

Originally the church was planted in 1993 in the Surulere area of Ilorin. It had 300 members, including three pastors and three evangelists, before its building in the Baboko area was destroyed. The construction of the church building began in 2001, with worship services beginning in 2004.

Rev. Fawenu of CAN confirmed the manner in which the church building was burned and said leaders of the association opposed the relocation order on the grounds that it “amounts to persecuting the members of that church.”

Speaking to reporters yesterday, Rev. Fawenu said he hopes the state government will intervene to prosecute the arsonists.

“If this matter is not addressed and the perpetrators of this sacrilegious act made to account for their sin and the concerned church adequately compensated, we will not be left with any other option than to believe that Kwara state is a state whereby everybody is at liberty to visit their fellow human beings with jungle justice,” he said.

Leaders of the Muslim community in Baboko declined to speak on the issue. A Kwara state spokesperson said officials would comment on the destruction of the church only after an investigation.  

Report from Compass Direct News