Henan: house church raided, 28 Christians arrested
Police interrupted a service being held in a home; they seized bibles they found there and arrested all those present. The owner of the house, the pastor and another person are still in prison.
Xiguan (AsiaNews) Police have raided a house church in Henan. On 28 May, officers entered a house in Xiguan in Fugou County, interrupted a service under way inside and arrested the 28 Christians present. This was reported by the China Aid Association (CAA), a US-based non-governmental organization that lobbies for religious freedom in China.
The arrest took place at 11am: after they entered, the officers took all those present to the local police station. According to some witnesses, the policemen did not show their identification cards nor did they present any arrest warrants. While disrupting the service, they confiscated bibles and notebooks belonging to members of the community, without giving a receipt for them.
After interrogation, 23 of them were released, while 59-year-old Liu Yuemei was forced to wait until his family paid a fine of 1,600 yuan (around 160 euros) to be released on 1 June. Another woman present at the service, Chang Xinhong, was released yesterday, but she had to pay a fine in cash.
At the moment, three members of the unofficial community are still in prison:
Chen Xuelan, 58 years, owner of the house; 55-year-old Cao Yan, the pastor and 52-year-old Li Shunmin.
Those who were released have decided to file a legal appeal and two Christian lawyers, Li Baiguang and Fan Yafeng, have accepted to defend them in court.
Beijing allows the practice of Protestant Christianity only within the Movement of the Three Autonomies (MTA), born in 1950 after Mao seized power and the expulsion of foreign missionaries and church leaders, including Chinese ones.
Official statistics reveal that there are 10 million official Protestants in China, all belonging to the MTA. Unofficial Protestants, who meet in unregistered "home churches", are estimated to reach more than 50 million.
.png)
