COMPASS DIRECT
Global News from the Frontlines
March 14, 2003
Compass Direct is distributed monthly to raise awareness of Christians worldwide who are persecuted for their faith. Articles may be reprinted or edited by active subscribers for use in other media, provided Compass Direct is acknowledged as the source of the material.
Copyright 2003 Compass Direct
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IN THIS ISSUE
CHINA
Shanghai House Church Leader Sent to Labor Camp
Philip Xu Guoxing faces third confinement in 14 years.
Police Conduct Mass Arrest of Christians
Detentions stem from policy of labeling unregistered house churches as ‘cults.’
Letters from China
Christians reveal personal trials and triumphs.
COLOMBIA
Christians Seek Peace in Former ‘Demilitarized Zone’
Yet the church has grown despite rebel violence.
EGYPT
Retrial Acquits Murderers of Coptic Christians
‘Lack of evidence’ points to police misconduct.
ETHIOPIA
Magistrate Releases Two Jailed Protestants***
Church elders’ detention a ‘shame,’ judge declares.
INDIA
Hindu Fundamentalists Plotted Attack on American Missionary
Report reveals multiple causes and ‘hard lessons’ learned.
VHP Seeks Constitutional Amendment to Declare India a Hindu Nation
Meanwhile, attacks against Christians and reconversions to Hinduism increase.
No One Speaks for Them
Tribal Christians are robbed of religious freedom.
INDONESIA
Christian Leader Threatened with Death Penalty***
Defendant Rinaldi Damanik is admitted to the hospital.
Islamic Court Opens
Thousands celebrate Islamic law in Aceh province.
MEXICO
Arsonists Strike Evangelicals in Chiapas
Church and private home destroyed in separate attacks.
NIGERIA
Army Uncovers Arms Smuggling
Investigation exposes shipments from Muslim-owned weapons factory.
Religious Conflict Invades Educational System
Muslims press demands on Christian schools in southwestern cities.
Religious Violence Erupts Again
Christians retaliate for previous Muslim attacks.
PERU
Peru Overturns Sham Terrorist Convictions
Ruling offers possible retrial for 1,000 prisoners.
PHILIPPINES
Violence Signals Potential Danger for Christians
Bombings, armed attacks claim 35 lives.
SUDAN
Anglican Church Runs Missions to Front Line
Cease-fire allows for increased ministry activity.
TURKEY
Pastor Acquitted in Construction Controversy***
Diyarbakir congregation aims for Easter dedication.
Protestant Church Pursues Official Status***
Legal charges dropped against Selcuk pastor.
UNITED STATES
U.S. State Department Lists Severe Religious Liberty Violators
Human rights advocates say more countries should have been included.
Recommended Countries of Particular Concern
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Shanghai House Church Leader Sent to Labor Camp
Philip Xu Guoxing Faces Third Confinement in 14 Years
by Xu Mei
NANJING, China (Compass) -- Philip Xu Guoxing, a prominent Shanghai house church leader, was worshipping with some 20 other Christians at his home on December 8 when police officers stormed into the meeting and arrested everyone present.
Officers confiscated Christian books, videos, a computer -- even the stools. All the other Christians were eventually released, but Xu was kept in detention. In early January, Xu was sentenced to 18 months in a labor camp to undergo “re-education through labor.” Only then did authorities inform his mother. Neither she nor his family was ever notified about the formal charges or a trial.
This is Xu’s fourth arrest in 20 years and the third time he has been sent to labor camp for the “crime” of preaching the gospel, according to a report broadcast by the BBC World Service on January 15.
Xu, 47, was one of the first Chinese citizens to go to the United States in 1980 to study under China’s “open door” policy. He returned in 1982 a dedicated Christian and in the next few years established a network of house churches in Shanghai and the surrounding rural areas of Jiangsu province.
Previous Arrests
On March 14, 1989, Xu was arrested in connection with a “thorough investigation” and interrogated. However, authorities concluded that he “had no political motivation, no intention of collecting money nor (was guilty of) sexual misconduct.” He was released on June 16 the same year.
However, following the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing in June 1989, the whole country came under tighter control. Xu was re-arrested on November 6, 1989, while holding a Bible study in Shanghai and sentenced to three years of “reform through labor.” He was sent to a labor camp at Dafeng in northern Jiangsu.
The daily diet at the Jiangsu camp was a bowl of soup and a vegetable. Prison guards regularly beat Xu and he often fainted from exhaustion. However, he witnessed openly for Christ and many of his fellow prisoners became Christians; so many, in fact, that he was transferred to another prison and kept under closer guard.
A head of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau offered Xu his freedom to go to America or Hong Kong if he would cease preaching the gospel, but he refused. He served his sentence and was released in 1992. He married in 1994 and his wife, also a committed Christian, gave birth to their daughter in 1995.
In 1997, the Chinese government began an enforced process of registration of all religious meetings. Many house church leaders, including Xu, felt in all conscience that they could not accept state interference in the free worship and evangelism of the church. Police and Religious Affairs Bureau informants took video of Xu’s house church in Shanghai.
On July 18, 1997, Xu was suddenly re-arrested and sentenced to a further three years “re-education through labor.” His family was not informed of the action. In February 1998, a top U.S. delegation for religious freedom visited Shanghai, but Xu’s family was prevented from meeting with them. The following year when U.S. President Clinton visited China, family members were kept under close surveillance and warned not to make contact with him.
Xu was due for release on June 12, 2000, but authorities arbitrarily detained him until July 17. He was in very poor health, so his family tried to persuade him to leave China. But he decided to stay for the sake of the gospel.
Fourth Arrest
Since March 1999, local police in Shanghai have sent officers to Xu’s house every Sunday to turn away worshipers. Nevertheless, they keep coming, awaiting the moment of the police shift change to enter worship.
The many years of suffering endured on Philip’s behalf have taken their toll on Xu’s 8 year-old daughter, his wife, his elderly mother and other close family members.
Xu’s fourth arrest just before Christmas reveals that no softening of Chinese government policy towards the house churches is underway. China hopes to showcase itself as a modern and open society during the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008. However, its continuing campaign against peaceful Christians, both Protestant and Catholic, shows that it has a long way to go to convince the world that it truly is an open society.
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Police in China Conduct Mass Arrest of Christians
Detentions Stem from Policy of Labeling Unregistered House Churches as ‘Cults’
by Xu Mei
NANJING, China (Compass) -- According to the Communist Chinese internal magazine People’s Security Report, 176 house church Christians were detained on December 27, 2002, and January 6, 2003. The Hong Kong newspapers South China Morning Post and Ming Pao Daily publicly revealed full details of the detentions on January 21.
On Christmas Day, police in Neixiang county, Henan province, learned of “illegal” house church gatherings which were supposedly “severely damaging the production and orderly life of the surrounding people.” They immediately dispatched a squad of People’s Militia to keep the meetings under surveillance. After three days, officials concluded that the gatherings were “nests of heresy.”
The Neixiang police raided the Shilipu meeting point while the Christians were meeting on December 27 and arrested all 78 worshippers, including leaders Liu Jiading and Wang Aimei. They also confiscated 120 Christian books.
On January 6, the police learned of other “illegal” Christian meetings led by Ding Yutang and Wang Yiqin. Both were preaching and evangelizing at meetings in Qiliping and Xiaguan townships attended by over 100 people. The people knelt on the floor, bowed their heads in prayer and often were weeping. The police determined that this was “a cult organization.” They surrounded both meetings, made arrests and confiscated 182 books, 120 tapes and nine video CDs.
According to the police account, the Christians ranged in age from 15 to 45 and belonged to the Total Scope Church (Quanfanwei Jiaohui). The church is associated with Peter Xu Yongze, who was arrested in 1988 while on his way to see Billy Graham in Beijing.
Evangelical Christians who stress the importance of the “born again” experience, Total Scope members vigorously deny charges that their church is a cult. Among the “heretical” magazines confiscated were copies of Christian Life Quarterly, a well known evangelical publication edited in Deerfield, Illinois, and widely distributed among Chinese scholars both in mainland China and overseas.
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Letters from China
Christians Reveal Personal Trials and Triumphs
Anhui
“Our house churches here are now under pressure and persecution. The authorities are demanding all preachers to have registration certificates. All preachers have to be vetted, and all church work must be managed and overseen by the relevant government departments. But when we discovered this was the state interfering with religion and that this mixing of politics and religion was not in accord with Scripture, we refused to accept it. So now we are under persecution. They have come many times to our Bible studies (our monthly meeting for church workers from 18 counties has over 1,000 attending) to broadcast the government’s religious policy through loudspeakers as well as loud pop music and threats that they will arrest us. But thank God, though we have been unable several times to complete our Bible study, the Christians are unafraid and keep coming. They have a determination to suffer if need be. The last two days, the authorities have set up two loudspeakers permanently on telephone poles near our meeting. I am worried and don’t know what we should do. Please pray for us.”
-- Letter from Mr. Yuan, dated October 15, 2002
Beijing
“The police are already keeping me under surveillance because I go on the Internet nearly every day to do a Bible correspondence course. A few days ago, a friend telephoned me to say that her house church had been notified that all meeting points must register and amalgamate with the open [TSPM government-supervised] churches in the city; otherwise they will be fined. But they do not want to merge because they have heard the leaders in some of these churches squander the believers’ offerings.”
-- Letter from Mr. Yao, dated October 15, 2002
“At present, the cult ‘Lightning from the East’ is disrupting the church by sheep-stealing. Please pray for the house churches. The government is ordering them to register, but then saying that house churches do not meet the conditions to register. Please pray for the church.”
-- Letter from Mr. Ma, dated October 21, 2002
Chongqing
“Last Sunday we started a Sunday School in our church for the first time. We have never had one before this, so we have no experience. Ten children attended, including my nine-year-old son. We taught them to sing John 3:16 and how to pray. Our church is registered with the government. But in the countryside, the Public Security have found many house churches and forbidden them to meet. Spiritually they are very needy. They have to constantly change the venue of their meetings. Otherwise they will be investigated and their Bibles confiscated. We often go to the countryside to preach to help them. But the farmers’ level of education is low. ‘Lightning from the East’ is now damaging our churches, and cults are springing up continually.”
-- Letter from Miss Su, dated November 26, 2002
Guangxi
“Although we are placed in an environment which is not ideal, we still can see the grace and blessing of God. When I think of the Lord on the cross, I do not consider what I am suffering to be anything at all. There are many evangelists who are suffering far greater persecution than I am. The leaders of my work unit sought me out for a ‘chat.’ They told me I must either renounce my faith or resign from the Communist Party. I have decided to leave the Party next year. I seize every opportunity to share the gospel with people or to give out gospel tracts.”
-- Letter dated November 8, 2002
Henan
“Our fellow workers have gone far away to preach the gospel, for instance, to Hunan and Hebei. We have also sent people to preach one after the other to Buddhist Tibet. We have also sent people to Yunnan. But we cannot discuss church affairs with the government people. We would definitely end up in jail!”
-- Letter from Mr. Wang, dated November 11, 2002
“We have many sects in the Nanyang region of Henan: Lightning from the East, the Three Self, Justification by Faith, Blessed Rice, Head Covering sect, etc. So the churches are very unstable. Moreover, recently many house churches have been broken up by the local police. So many believers and those who have become inquirers do not dare to meet together.”
-- Letter from Miss Dian, now a migrant worker in Guangdong, dated November 5, 2002
Hunan
“Government departments often interfere with our house churches because we have not done things through them. We have no good preachers. Can you send some Christian books? Our brothers and sisters are longing to receive them.”
-- Letter from Mr. Zhou, dated November 1, 2002
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Colombian Christians Seek Peace in Former ‘Demilitarized Zone’
Yet the Church has Grown Despite Rebel Violence
by David Miller
MIAMI (Compass) -- February 20 marked a cheerless anniversary for Colombia. On that day in 2002, a band of guerrilla fighters of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) hijacked a commuter jet, forced it to land and kidnapped one of the passengers -- Senator Jorge Gechem Turbay, a key government spokesman in negotiations aimed at ending Colombia’s long-running civil war.
The brazen kidnapping was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back for then president, Andrés Pastrana, who had been trying to negotiate a peace accord with the rebels since before he took office four years earlier. That same day, he broke off diplomatic contact with FARC and ordered the Colombian military to expel the insurgents from the special “demilitarized zone” they occupied in the southern department of Caquetá.
Pastrana had ceded the 15,000 square-mile enclave to FARC in January 1999 as a good faith gesture to promote a peaceful solution to the 38-year-old conflict. The president ordered national police and army units out of the zone, leaving FARC in virtual control of the civilian population.