Chinese county govt cracks down on Xmas gathering

December 25, 2013 Leave a comment

Chinese county govt cracks down on Xmas gathering

BEIJING — Lawyers and churchgoers said they had been prevented from meeting in a central Chinese county yesterday to commemorate Christmas and draw attention to the detention of a pastor and his aides.

BY –

5 HOURS 18 MIN AGO

BEIJING — Lawyers and churchgoers said they had been prevented from meeting in a central Chinese county yesterday to commemorate Christmas and draw attention to the detention of a pastor and his aides.The proposed meeting at the church in Henan province’s Nanle county came during a month-long crackdown on the church over a land dispute that pits its popular preacher against the county government.Nanle’s congregation had wanted to hold a prayer meeting yesterday morning to mark Christmas.

However, they also sought to use the gathering to rally support for their pastor, Mr Zhang Shaojie, and more than a dozen of his aides who have been detained by the police for more than a month and denied access to their lawyers.

Rights attorney Xia Jun said he and several other lawyers who had travelled to Nanle were on their way to the prayer meeting when they were blocked by about two dozen middle-aged women and some men.

Mr Xia said he believed the local authorities had hired the group to chase the visitors out of the county.

The case has drawn the scrutiny of rights lawyers and activists who say it exposes the ability of a county government to act with impunity against a local Christian church even if it is state-sanctioned.

Church supporters say the county government reneged on an agreement to allocate a piece of land for the construction of a new building, leaving them without a place of worship.

The dispute highlights the vulnerable position that religious groups hold in the Chinese political system under the communist government, a China expert said.

“They don’t have the power, they don’t have the social status. Perhaps, local officials feel that to take them on is not a big deal,” said Professor Fenggang Yang, a sociologist and expert on religion in China at Purdue University. AP

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