Displaying items by tag: ChinaAid

On 1 September, new rules came into force to limit all religious activities to official venues only and forbid displaying any religious symbols outdoors. All religious activity must be supervised by the state so that places of worship support the leadership of China’s Communist Party. Release International’s Paul Robinson says the new rules are tantamount to a complete ban on Christianity, but in fact Christianity in China is growing. The number of Christians in China has long surpassed the membership of the Communist Party. ChinaAid said they have not seen the Communist Party as bold as they have been this summer in playing God and twisting how the Gospel is taught. The only correct perspective in the eyes of the Communist government is worship of the state and placing faith in Xi Jinping.

On 16 April Bitter Winter, a magazine on religious liberty and human rights, published the following: ‘His wife’s picket at the Chinese consulate in Almaty got so much attention that the CCP decided to give up, and set her husband free after 17 years of detention. Those who insist that picketing and protesting outside Chinese embassies and consulates is a waste of time were proved wrong in Kazakhstan.’ An amazing Kazakh woman from Xinjiang who had picketed the Chinese consulate in Almaty achieved the return of her husband Rakhizhan Zeinolla. He had been arrested without evidence when he went to Xinjiang from Kazakhstan, and kept in jail for 13 years. Then he was put into a camp, and later was under house arrest.

Shi Minglei remembers the fear when twenty security officers arrested her husband, put a black hood over her head, and interrogated her for thirty hours. Her daughter Aliyah was unable to speak after the incident. On countless occasions she felt pain, fear loneliness and hopelessness as a wife of an imprisoned human rights activist. She received no responses to her requests for information; the authorities had dismissed his lawyer and assigned communist party lawyers to convince him to plead guilty. She was desperate and she prayed like Jesus had prayed in Gethsemane, ‘Father, take this cup from me, but not my will, Your will be done.’ Then Jesus spoke to her heart: ‘I know. I know everything about you.’ Later ChinaAid staff found her and helped her escape with her daughter from China. After living a life of fear and hopelessness she now felt secure, so she changed her name to Hope.

Bob Fu, who lives in Texas, is a former Tiananmen Square protester who now runs ChinaAid and campaigns for religious freedom in China. He has been targeted with death threats and his family were traumatised by bomb threats and protests outside their home as Fu delivered an address in Washington on Christian persecution in China. The threats necessitated the family being evacuated from their home and taken into protective custody. His 15-year-old daughter had to be taken out of school by armed police. Although they have now returned home, they remain under police protection. Fu said, ‘I have no doubt this is directly from Beijing. The goal is clear. It's to silence my voice for freedom in China and to destroy the ministry of ChinaAid. We cannot let them stop us: it's business as usual.’