Chinese Police Detain Protestant Leaders

East Asia / Pacific - China
21 Oct 2005 - Associated Press

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Police raided a religious retreat in northern China and detained more than 50 leaders of the country's independent Protestant church movement, a U.S.-based support group said Friday.

China Aid Association said at least one of the female participants was beaten in Thursday evening's raid.

Church leaders from more than 20 provinces and cities had gathered in the village of Gougezhuang in Hebei province, south of Beijing, to discuss outreach, the association said in a statement. China Aid is based in Midland, Texas.

Those arrested included Zhang Mingxuan, identified by the association as a pastor and well-known evangelist who once ran a nursing home in Beijing.

Spokesmen at police headquarters in Laishui township, which oversees Gougezhuang, and in the regional capital of Baoding said they had no information about the reported detentions. Neither man would give his name as is standard practice among Chinese bureaucrats.

China allows worship only in the nondenominational Protestant church, whose activities are tightly controlled by the officially atheistic Communist Party.

However, millions of Chinese Protestants belong to independent groups often referred to as house churches because congregations meet in private homes to avoid detection and arrest.

Such groups face varying degrees of official harassment and persecution, although leaders say conditions nationwide have worsened since the introduction of new regulations last year aimed at isolating independent groups or forcing them to join the official church.

"The government is systematically targeting the house church movement in China," said Bob Fu, president of the China Aid Association.




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