AsiaNews (04/20/06) On the day of the visit to the White House of Chinas President, Hu Jintao, the China Aid Association [CAA an American NGO lobbying for religious freedom in China ] denounced new and ever more violent persecution against Chinese Protestant Christians. CAA investigators on the ground in China said police raided a meeting of Protestant pastors in Yunnan on 23 March.
In a statement, the CAA said: At 9:30am, March 23, over 120 security officers from five different government agencies raided a conference building in the suburb of Kunming City, the capital of Yunnan Province seven foreign evangelical church leaders were present at the meeting, including five Americans and two Taiwanese, who were apprehended by police and interrogated for no good reason.
The statement continued: More than 80 Chinese house church leaders from 20 provinces, representing 25 Chinese minority groups, were attending the meeting. The five Americans lead churches in Greensboro North Carolina . Among them, two were Americans and three Chinese Americans. Since they are still in China , their names cannot be made available to the public for security reasons.
The CAA said it was certain the raid was directly orchestrated by the director of the Yunnan Public Security Office, and carried out jointly by the officers from the provincial public security, national security, foreign affairs office, religious affairs bureau and military police officers. Eyewitnesses said the interrogation was very tough and the police refused to show their ID cards.
The foreign pastors were accused of illegal religious infiltration and their Chinese counterparts were subjected to inhuman torture during interrogation including forced administration of drugs and other abusive methods to extract a confession of guilt.
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