PSB officers torture yet another Christian human rights attorney

China’s Public Secruity Bureau (PSB) officers have tortured yet another Christian human rights attorney. Zheng Enchong was beaten, stripped, and burned with cigarettes on June 17, reports MNN with a link to China Aid Association.

Four officers from Zhabei District branch of Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau had summoned him. Although they did not actually interrogate Zheng during the torture, authorities compiled a written record of the interrogation anyway.

They wanted Zheng to sign the record, but he refused. Instead, he wrote a statement on the record describing his treatment by the PSB and comparing it to the government’s treatment of Falun Gong practitioners. He plans to file a complaint with the central government.

The government has been harassing Zheng ever since he filed an important legal case in 2003, arguing that government officials conspired with Zhou Zhengyi, “the richest man in Shanghai,” to illegally confiscate homes for demolition.

Officials have summoned Zheng almost 20 times, and they have searched his house twice in the last two and a half months. He has difficulty walking after suffering four severe beatings by the authorities.

Zheng already served three years in prison for “illegally providing secrets to overseas entities” after filing the confiscation case. This charge related to an allegation that Zheng faxed two documents regarding workers’ protests to the non-profit organization Human Rights in China.

“As an internationally well-known Christian human rights lawyer, Attorney Zheng has always defended the poor and vulnerable,” said Bob Fu, president of ChinaAid and a friend of Mr. Zheng and his family. “The repeated harassment and torture against such a conscientious rights defender demonstrates the Shanghai authorities’ total disregard to citizens’ basic human rights. We encourage the international community to continue to press the Chinese authorities to stop these hideous acts and to hold the abusers accountable.”

Report from the Christian Telegraph

CHINA: ACTION URGED FOR MISSING RIGHTS ACTIVIST

State-sponsored thugs threatened to kill Gao Zhisheng if he revealed torture.

LOS ANGELES, March 25 (Compass Direct News) – Certain that Chinese authorities are torturing Christian human rights activist Gao Zhisheng following the escape of his family to the United States, advocacy group China Aid Association (CAA) today urged the international community to take action on his behalf.

Earlier this year Gao had authorized CAA to release his account of 50 days of torture by state-sponsored thugs in September and October of 2007. Gao had written the account in November 2007 while under house arrest in Beijing after prolonged beatings and electric shocks on his mouth and genitals.

“Every time when I was tortured,” Gao wrote, “I was always repeatedly threatened that if I spelled out later what had happened to me, I would be tortured again, but I was told, ‘This time it will happen in front of your wife and children.’”

On Jan. 9, less than a month before state security agents in his home village in Shaanxi province abducted him on Feb. 4, Gao’s family members began their escape from China. They arrived on foot to Thailand and eventually were whisked to the United States. They arrived in Los Angeles on March 11 and transferred to New York on March 14.

Gao’s wife, Geng He, along with 16-year-old daughter Geng Ge and 5-year-old son Gao Tianyu, fear for his safety. In his 2007 account, Gao had written that those who captured and tortured him warned that if he revealed their ill treatment of him, he would be killed.

Gao wrote that Chinese officials among his captors – some of whom he recognized – referred to a report he had written on the torture of members of the Falun Gong spiritual group and warned him that he was about to suffer the same way. They urinated on him and repeatedly prodded his body, mouth and genitals with electric shock batons.

He described a tall, strong man who pulled his hair and said repeatedly, “Your death is sure if you share this with the outside world.”

 

Escape from China

Gao’s wife reportedly said that fleeing China was “extraordinarily difficult,” and that friends risked their lives to help them defect.

Geng reportedly said that Gao, under constant police surveillance, was unable to accompany them. According to Agence France-Presse (AFP), Geng told Radio Free Asia that the family traveled by train before crossing into Thailand on foot – walking day and night.

Her daughter and son had been under virtual house arrest, according to the AFP report. The adolescent Geng Ge had been unable to attend school, and with her increasing desperation came several suicide attempts, Gao’s wife reportedly told Radio Free Asia. The family is seeking asylum in the United States.

Aiding in their escape was were several groups, according to The Epoch Times, including Friends of Gao Zhisheng, the Global Association for the Rescue of Gao Zhisheng and the U.N. Refugee Agency.

Gao, who has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, has also defended house church Christians and coal miners as well as members of the banned Falun Gong, which fuses Buddhist-inspired teachings with forms of meditation. In 1999 Beijing banned it as an “evil cult.”

Gao’s suffering in the fall of 2007 followed an open letter he wrote to the U.S. Congress describing China’s torture of Falun Gong members and other human rights abuses.

“The persecution of Falun Gong is the worst disaster to human nature in this era,” he wrote. “It does not mean, however, that the rights of other religious groups in China are not violated. The CCP [Chinese Communist Party]’s continuous suppression of Christian family churches is comparable to the shocking persecution of Falun Gong.”

Persecution in towns and villages toward house church members is “no different from the disaster suffered by Falun Gong practitioners,” he wrote. “In my hometown, a small county, the number of arrested, detained, and robbed family church members each year is far beyond persecuted Falun Gong practitioners, and this illegal persecution has been going on for a long time.”

Harassment of house church Christians increased significantly last year, according to CAA. A total of 2,027 Christians were affected in incidents reported to CAA in 2008, compared with 788 people in 2007. Of the 2008 total, 764 Christians were arrested and detained, most for brief periods, and 35 were sentenced to prison terms or re-education through labor.

In Beijing, the total number of people persecuted was 539, up 418 percent from the 104 reported in 2007, CAA said.

In his November 2007 account, released last Feb. 9, Gao said that officials asked him to write articles cursing Falun Gong and praising the government. When he refused, they pressured him to write a statement saying that Falun Gong practitioners had given him false evidence of torture, and that – despite constant harassment – the government had treated him and his family well. Gao said he signed this statement, as well as others in which he confessed to sexual impropriety, after beatings that left him unrecognizable.

Eventually, he wrote in the November 2007 account, under torture he agreed to his captors’ demand that he admit to illicit affairs, and he invented stories about four different women.

Gao, who at one time had been honored by China’s justice ministry as one of the top 10 lawyers for his service to the poor, resigned his membership in the CCP in 2005 to protest repression of the Falun Gong.

CAA and Gao’s family are urging concerned people worldwide to sign a petition to the Chinese government advocating his release at www.FreeGao.com .

Report from Compass Direct News

CHINA: TORTURED CHRISTIAN LAWYER ARRESTED AS OFFICIALS DENY ABUSES

Detailed evidence of human rights violations omitted from U.N. summary report.

DUBLIN, February 11 (Compass Direct News) – A Christian defender of human rights in China – whom authorities detained last week – detailed state-sponsored torture he suffered in 2007 in an open letter released on Monday (Feb. 9), the same day advocacy groups criticized a U.N. review of China’s treatment of Christians and other minorities for omitting serious abuses.

While a Chinese delegate at the U.N. review asserted that China would never allow torture against religious members or other minorities, the open letter by Christian lawyer Gao Zhisheng – whom officials seized from his Beijing home on Feb. 4 – described 50 days of beatings and electric shocks on his mouth and genitals by state-sponsored thugs that left him desperate to die.

Gao and his family authorized China Aid Association (CAA) to release the letter, written on Nov. 28, 2007, when Gao was under house arrest in Beijing. Currently Gao’s whereabouts are unknown, according to CAA.

The letter gives a detailed account of torture he suffered in September and October of 2007. Gao said his official captors – some of whom he recognized – referred to a report he had written earlier on the torture of Falun Gong members and warned him that he was about to experience the same treatment. They urinated on Gao and repeatedly prodded his body, mouth and genitals with electric shock batons. Other methods used were too graphic and “horrible” to describe, Gao said.

Officials later asked Gao to write articles cursing Falun Gong and praising the government. When he refused, they pressured him to write a statement saying that Falun Gong practitioners had given him false evidence of torture, and that – despite constant harassment – the government had treated him and his family well. Gao said he signed this statement, as well as others in which he confessed to sexual impropriety, after beatings that left him unrecognizable and the insertion of toothpicks into his genitals.

“I can’t use any language to describe the helplessness, pain and despair that I felt then,” he wrote. “Finally I made up stories, telling them about affairs that I had with four women. After more repeated torture, I had to describe how I had sex with each of these women. This continued until dawn the next day.”

 

Skewed Review

During the U.N. review of China’s human rights record on Monday (Feb. 9), Chinese delegate Song Hansong of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate said that use of torture to obtain evidence was a criminal offense and that China had “established a comprehensive safeguard measure against torture in all our prisons and detention facilities.”

“China is firmly against torture and would never allow torture to be used on ethnic groups, religious believers or other groups,” Song said.

Louis-Martin Aumais, speaking for Canada, had asked that China follow recommendations of the Committee Against Torture, particularly on the inadmissibility in court of statements obtained through torture. He also asked that China ensure fundamental legal rights for those detained on state security charges, including access to counsel, public trial and sentencing and eligibility for parole.

Australian representative Caroline Millar welcomed improvements in China over the past 30 years but expressed concern over “reports of harassment, arbitrary arrest, punishment and detention of religious and ethnic minorities.”

Li Baodong, ambassador and permanent representative of China at the United Nations, said that 50 government departments were working on a national human rights plan to be implemented this year and in 2010.

Rights groups such as CAA and Human Rights Watch stated that a summary of reports submitted for the review omitted documented details of serious human rights abuses, including the treatment of Christians and other minority groups. Omitted documentation that Non-Governmental Organizations had submitted included evidence of mistreatment of Christians, Tibetan and Uyghur minority groups and human rights defenders.

 

Documented Abuses

Harassment of house church Christians increased significantly last year, according to a CAA report released on Feb. 5. A total of 2,027 Christians were affected in incidents reported to CAA in 2008, compared with 788 people in 2007. Of the 2008 total, 764 Christians were arrested and detained, most for brief periods, and 35 were sentenced to prison terms or re-education through labor.

In Beijing, the total number of people persecuted was 539, up 418 percent from the 104 reported in 2007, CAA said.

“This is not hard to understand, because whenever the government holds important social events, serious suppression is implemented to maintain the appearance of stability through spreading fear among people,” the report states. “Beside the factor of the Olympic Games, we cannot ignore that the persecution of Christianity and of some other religions serves as an essential policy of the atheist Chinese Communist government.”

Local governments in China last year reported on continued measures to prevent “illegal” religious gatherings and curb other criminalized religious activities, according to reports from the U.S. Congressional Executive Commission on China (CECC) on Dec. 20 and Feb. 2. The commission consists of nine senators, nine house representatives, and five senior administration officials appointed by the U.S. president.

From information provided on a local government website, the CECC learned that authorities in Hechuan district, Chongqing municipality last October had launched a six-month campaign to root out “illegal venues for worship.” Authorities were concerned about “anti-Chinese political forces” using Christianity to “infiltrate the area” and outlined a five-point plan to address illegal worship sites, including the “transformation through re-education” of Protestant members of unauthorized meeting places.

A website of the Wuhan municipal government in Hunan province described draft legislation aimed at curbing freedom of worship in private homes; the new law would permit only immediate family members to take part in such gatherings.

The United Front Work Department in Fuzhou city, Jiangxi province, responsible for the oversight of religious communities, reported last year that work to “transform and expand the patriotism of underground Catholic forces” was a key objective, as these forces were exerting a negative impact on the city, according to the CECC. The Fuzhou department report also expressed concern about unauthorized Protestant preaching.

A Xinjiang government website also detailed a campaign to educate children and young people against ethnic separatism and illegal religious activities, according to the CECC.

Evidence from these sources concurred with reports from watch groups such as CAA regarding the closure of house churches, detention of house church members and harassment of house church leaders, the commission said.

 

Arrests on ‘State Security’ Charges

In Xinjiang, Uyghur Christians Alimjan Yimit (Alimujiang Yimit in Chinese) and Osman Imin (Wusiman Yaming in Chinese) both detained on state security charges, remain behind bars – one sentenced, the other still waiting for a trial date.

In a closed trial in September 2007, the Xinjiang State Security Bureau (SSB) had sentenced Osman to two years of re-education through labor for “revealing state secrets” and “illegal proselytizing.” Associates, however, said he knew nothing about state matters and was arrested for being an outspoken Christian and a leader in the Uyghur church.

Officials had called for a 10-15 year criminal sentence, but after international media attention they significantly reduced the term.

Xinjiang court officials returned Alimjan’s case to state prosecutors in May last year, citing lack of evidence on charges of “inciting secessionist sentiment” and “collecting and selling intelligence for overseas organizations.” State prosecutors returned the case to court officials in mid-October for reconsideration.

During Alimjan’s employment with two foreign-owned companies, SSB officials regularly called him in for interrogation, forbidding him to discuss the questioning with anyone. In September 2007, they closed the business Alimjan worked for and accused him of using it as a cover for “preaching Christianity among people of Uyghur ethnicity.”

Officials have since denied regular visits from lawyers or family members and threatened to hand down a sentence ranging from six years in prison to execution.

Lawyers had hoped for an early acquittal for Alimjan based on unfair treatment due to his Christian beliefs, but a lengthy bureaucratic process has dimmed these hopes.

Report from Compass Direct News

CANADIAN LAW PROHIBITING POLYGAMY FACES CHALLENGE

Canada’s anti-polygamy law will likely be facing a legal challenge now that the leaders of the controversial polygamous sect in Bountiful, near Cranbrook, British Columbia, have been arrested. Winston Blackmore, the “bishop” of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and James Oler are facing criminal charges for practicing polygamy, reports Hilary White, LifeSiteNews.com.

Wally Oppal, BC’s Attorney General, announced at a press conference that Blackmore and Oler were arrested yesterday by eight plainclothes RCMP officers. The two men were later released on their own cognizance after being charged. The two cooperated with the arrest and agreed to the release conditions that they surrender their passports, stay in British Columbia and not enter into or perform any “plural marriages.”

The two men are scheduled to make their first court appearance January 21. They are the first men to be charged with polygamy since the 1800s, even though police have known of the situation in Bountiful for more than 60 years.

Up until now law-enforcement officials have been hesitant to arrest practitioners of polygamy under fears that the law would not survive a challenge under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. On at least two previous occasions the RCMP have recommended that arrests be made, but the Crown denied the recommendation, saying that the ban on polygamy would likely be struck down.

The estimated population of Bountiful in 1998 was 600 and has since grown to about 800. Most of the residents are descended from only half a dozen men who practice what is called in the breakaway Mormon sect “multiple marriage” or “celestial marriage.” Blackmore claims to have had 26 wives and more than 108 children. The mainstream Mormon church formally renounced polygamy more than a century ago.

In 2006, the Vancouver Sun released information stating that Utah’s Attorney General is collaborating with British Columbia’s Attorney General in attempting to deal with polygamy and the alleged abuse in Bountiful. But pressure has been growing in Parliament, especially since the institution of homosexual “marriage,” to change the law to allow for polygamy.

In 2007, Richard Peck, a criminal lawyer and BC special prosecutor reviewed the results of a police investigation and concluded that there was insufficient evidence to charge the group with sexual abuse or exploitation. He warned that the defendants would likely claim religious freedom as a defense. Peck recommended that the BC Attorney General petition the courts to determine if Canada’s ban on polygamy is constitutional.

Pro-family advocates have long warned that the erosion of legal marriage in Canada, as well as in other western countries, starting with no-fault divorce and most recently with the institution of homosexual “marriage” and civil unions, would lead to the legalisation of polygamy. Indeed, following the invention of same-sex “marriage” in Canadian law, the federal Justice Department under the Liberal government produced a report suggesting the legalisation of polygamy.

Report from the Christian Telegraph