Students at a Bible school in China attended a study session on last year’s 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and were urged to pay respect to three Christian figures who became associates of the party, says a report.
The Shaanxi Bible School in north-western Shaanxi province, managed by the state-sanctioned Protestant church body, the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM), held the session on May 31, Bitter Winter magazine reported June 7.
The TSPM is known as a frontline organization promoting “Sinicization” – a favourite political ideology of the CCP that aims to impose communist principles on individuals and society.
During the session, the students studied the main speeches and conclusions of the CCP Congress held on Oct. 16-22 last year, in Beijing.
They watched videos of the congress and sang patriotic songs including the CCP’s favorite “Sing a Folk Song for the Par-ty,” Bitter Winter reported.
By singing patriotic songs, the students “expressed their love for the motherland and the CCP.”
During the session, the students were told to honour three revolutionaries, whose lives were narrated by three of its students.
Music composer, Ma Ke, medical doctor, Luo Jinwen, and Bishop Shen Zigao were known as supporters of the late communist leader and CCP chairman, Mao Zedong.
They are accused of betraying Christianity to become staunch supporters and associates of the CCP, according to Bitter Winter.
Ma Ke, raised in a Christian family, was an official music composer of the party for years. He is known for composing the CCP’s favourite revolutionary song “Nanniwan.”
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Poverty, hunger drive suicides in North Korea
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has ordered local authorities to take suicide prevention measures after various media re-ports revealed families committed suicide due to hunger and poverty. Kim officially defined suicide as an “act of treason against socialism” and issued a confidential suicide prevention order during emergency meetings of the party leaders all over the country, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported on June 5.
An unnamed official from North Hamgyong told RFA that the details of suicide cases shared during the meeting shocked the gathered officials.
“Our meeting was held at the provincial party committee’s building located in Pohang district, in the city of Chongjin,” the unnamed official said.
He further added that “the large number of suicide cases in the province was revealed and some officials… could not hide their anxious expressions.”
According to a South Korean National Intelligence Service report published in May, North Korea saw a 40 percent increase in suicide rates compared to last year, RFA reported.
“There are a lot of internal unrest factors in North Korea due to the hardships of people,” the agency also reported that violent crimes are also on the rise as people struggle to make ends meet. During a meeting in North Hamgyong, the officials revealed that there were 35 suicide cases this year in Chongjin and nearby Kyongsong county alone with many of the cases involving fami-lies ending their lives together.
Indonesia to relax building rules for worship Places
The Indonesian government has decided to ease rules for building houses of worship, including churches, by initiating changes to a 17-year-old decree, considered a major barrier to such plans.
Religion Affairs Minister Yaqut Cholil Qoumas told law-makers on June 5 that the Joint Ministerial Decree of 2006 will be revised, doing away with the need for a recommendation from the Forums for Religious Harmony (Forum Kerukunan Umat Beragama, or FKUB), the main arbiter on issues regarding inter-faith ties.
According to current rules, a government license for building a place of worship can be obtained only by getting a set of recommendations, including one from the Muslim-dominated FKUB.
The change would mean the recommendation from represen-tatives of the ministry in the local government would be sufficient to construct a house of worship.
“Often, the more recommendations the more difficult it is,” said the minister, who is a cleric and member of Indonesia’s lar-gest moderate Islamic organization Nahdlatul Ulama.
“We can’t deny that,” the minister said of many proposals new houses of worship are rejected in the country.
“We can solve all problems if we start with honesty, especially being honest with our religion,” said the Muslim politician.
Andreas Harsono, a researcher from Human Rights Watch, said that “by removing permits for houses of worship from FKU-B, the government is actually returning the principle of freedom of religion, according to the 1945 Constitution, to Indonesia.”
Chinese Christians jailed for printing religious materials
A court in China’s Shandong province handed down jail terms to a pastor and a co-worker of an independent house church for alleged “illegal business operations.”
Pastor Qin Sifeng and co-worker Su Minjun of Beijing Lampstand Church were sentenced to five and a half years, and three and half years respectively, ChinaAid reported on June 6.
Although their trial was held in April, the verdict has been made public recently, the report said.
They were arrested in July last year while they were traveling to Yunan province. The next month, police at Zibo in Shandong charged them with illegal business operations and detained them at Zibo Detention Center.
Local Christians said the arrest of Qin and Su came after the church printed some hymnals and theological materials for internal use. Local police started a probe leading to their detention.
Witnesses told ChinaAid that during the trial the defendants were treated like “hardened criminals” as they appeared in the court handcuffed and manacled. The court dismissed the plea of innocence handed by their lawyer.
The court verdict was approved by high-level state officials before the pronouncement.
Pastor Qin Sifeng said he still feels upbeat despite his imprisonment.
He said this is “an opportunity to spread the Gospel.”
Some reports suggest many pastors and Christians serving jail sentences continue to preach in prison. The act sometimes yields good results, earning respect from prison guards, while others are prevented from doing so in prison.
Article 36 of China’s constitution guarantees freedom of religious belief, but that freedom is seriously limited by the requirement that congregations adapt their “theology, conception, and organization” to socialist principles, according to Human Rights Watch.
Corpus Christi procession in Valencia, Spain, continues to catechize
Year after year, the feast of Corpus Christi brings whole neighborhoods to the streets in Spain, with some enterprising families chaining lawn chairs to prominent viewing spots days in advance. This year was no different, with the procession lasting for hours and civic and religious leaders, as well as representatives of various religious groups, taking part.
Each city’s procession has something special. For example, the city of Toledo is known for lining its streets with thousands of flowers. Valencia, a city on the southeastern coast, has many memorable traditions.
Valencia’s first Corpus Christi procession was recorded in a historical document in 1355, and by 1372, it was an annual affair. Its particular characte-ristics stand out.
The Valencia cathedral has a chalice that some historians believe could be the Holy Grail. This gives the city a decidedly eucharistic feel, even when it’s not Corpus Christi. Naturally, the chalice is always featured in the Valencia procession.
Valencia, Spain, claims to have the largest processional monstrance in the world and uses it in Corpus Christi processions.
Asian Church voices concern over shrinking democratic spaces
A weeklong conference of Asian Church leaders has ex-pressed concern over shrinking democratic spaces in several countries in the region.
The June 5-10 conference at Marian Pilgrim Centre Bai Dau in the Vang Tau City of Vietnam regretted that the rulers in those countries have become totalitarian, violating their citizens’ basic rights and instilling fear among civil society groups that take up people’s cause.
“Wider surveillance and threatening national security laws are employed to silence the voice of the voiceless and the media who are standing for the cause of the poor and the marginalized,” the meeting noted.
The conference addressed the FABC 50, a document issued by the Federation of the Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC) on its golden jubilee, and its implication for the region.
Another common concern in the region is migration that forces people to leave their counties out of economic compulsions and look for better opportunities in life. “The local Church fails to protect and safeguard the people on the move. The left behind families and abandoned children of the migrants become burning issues to be addressed with utmost urgencies,” the conference said.
The participants also observed a widening rich-poor gap in most Asian countries. The number of the poor and child labour have increased in the post Covid-19 period because of the government’s pro-rich policies. The conference attributed low minimum wages and informalization of the workforce as the reasons for unequal distribution of the wealth among people.
Another burning issue is the rise of religious fanaticism as many countries now witness in-tolerance among different religious groups, attack against the minorities especially the Christians who are minorities in many Asian countries.
The ‘My religion is better attitude’ limits the space for dialogue, encounter and learning between the religions and the cultures, the conference regret-ted.
The meeting also addressed ecological concerns and made a call to ‘Save mother Earth.’ “Modern life and its luxuries are built upon the cry of nature. Globalization and urbanization induced heartless development at the expense of the environment. The Digital technology also has caused enough havoc in the lives of families, especially among the youth and the children,” lamented the participants.
Conditions harden for Belarus Catholics
A Catholic parish priest accused of “offending state authorities” in Belarus said he understood the hardships facing prisoners of conscience after just four days in jail.
“I wouldn’t wish this on anyone – not a single hour in such a place,” said Father Andrej Kulik, rector of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Parish at Miory. “Many of my colleagues have sat in prison for various concocted reasons in recent de-cades, not just here in Belarus, and it made no difference that I was a Catholic priest.”
The 44-year-old pastor spoke after being arrested May 25 with two other clergy in the eastern Vitebsk Diocese in connection with social media posts.
In an OSV News interview, he said he had been allowed to return home May 28. He hasn’t been charged with anything and his case was sent for revision.
“My parish prayed for me, while my bishop requested my release and said he had discussed my case with state representatives and the Vatican nunciature,” said Father Kulik, one of 57 priests serving the Vitebsk Diocese’s 94 Catholic parishes.
“While the accusations against us are often similar, the details of each case are different. But prison isn’t a place where anyone should be.”
New discoveries of genocide victims Rwanda’s ‘sad reality,’ priest says
More than 1,000 corpses will be buried at the Mibilizi genocide memorial site in Rwanda on June 3. The bodies of 1,238 victims of the 1994 mass killings recently were exhumed from church-owned land, and according to a Catholic priest and diocesan official in Rwanda, the discovery of the cache of remains means the route to reconciliation is still long.
Father Théogène Ngoboka, Director of the Justice and Peace Commission of Cyangugu Dio-cese, carries out pastoral work in Rusizi prison, which has 3,850 inmates, of whom 1,300 are incarcerated for genocide.
“It is very deplorable, but it is our sad reality,” Ngoboka said of the newly discovered mass graves.
“During the genocide, bodies were thrown here and there. It is not surprising that bodies can still be found today, but what is very shocking is the high number of bodies that have been found in mass graves that were not reveal-ed until now. This shows that there is still a long way to go in the process of unity and recon-ciliation,” he told.
The remains of at least 1000 more victims of genocide were exhumed from church land in Gashonga village recently. How did you receive that news, and what does that tell you about the scale of the killings that took place some 29 years ago?
Nicaragua dictatorship confiscates assets of political prisoners it deported to U.S.
A Nicaraguan court on June 9 announced the “freezing and forfeiture” of all real estate and of all shares of commercial companies belonging to the 222 political prisoners who were deported to the U.S. in February.
The ruling by Criminal Chamber 1 of the Court of Appeals based in Managua, dated May 19, points out that the former prisoners were declared “traitors to the homeland” and therefore exiled from the country and stripped of their citizenship.
“This theft is another serious violation of fundamental human rights, since private property is a constitutional right and a basic legal guarantee recorded in multiple inter-national agreements signed by Nicaragua,” said former Nicaraguan presidential candidate Félix Maradiaga in a message shared with ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. “It’s a very serious action against the 222 political prisoners in addition to the action that had been previously taken against another 94 people on another list, including my wife, Berta Valle,” he added.
According to Maradiaga, this latest court decision adds “to the list of humiliations that the dictatorship has committed against this group of Nicaraguans, who have also suffered imprisonment, torture, public defamation campaigns, family separation, and the violation of their constitutional rights.”
He also warned that “this theft irreparably harms the entire Nicaraguan legal establishment in matters of private property.”
Religious tensions in Japan as Muslim population grows
Japan’s religious landscape is undergoing a transformative shift, which is all the more evident by looking at the growing number of mosques that have emerged in the country over the past two decades.
The change can be attributed to a lesser degree to increasing intermarriage between Muslims and Japanese citizens (many Japanese converted to Islam through marriage), but mostly to the rising number of immigrants coming from Islamic states.
The number of Muslims in Japan was estimated to be between 10,000 to 20,000 in the year 2000 while the current estimates are of over 200,000. That is a ten-fold increase in less than one generation.
Also, mosques that used to be an uncommon sight in Japan are no longer rare. As of March 2021, there were 113 mosques in Japan, up from only 15 in 1999.
A notorious case is the Masjid Istiqlal Osaka, which came up in Osaka’s Nishinari Ward last year. It is housed in a structure that was once a factory. Donations from Indonesians mostly funded the costs of the renovation work, and we know that the largest Muslim population in the world is found in Indonesia.
While this trend reflects a more inclusive Japanese society, it also presents challenges and friction.