Nine Chinese Christians be-longing to a Protestant house church have remained in police detention following their arrest ten days ago for allegedly carrying out activities in the name of “an illegal social organization.”
Christians from the Fuyang Maizhong Reformed Church in Fuyang city in northwestern China’s Anhui province were arrested on March 10 during a Sunday gathering, a report from China Aid said on March 21. Plainclothes police officers and officials from the local religious affairs bureau carried out the raid and detained total of 18 Christians, including two children. Eight of them were placed under 13-day administrative detention and the church’s Elder Chang Shun was slapped with a 15-day detention.
Fuyang Maizhong Reformed Church and its members have been targeted several times since 2018 for refusing to join the state-sanctioned Three-Self Church, which oversees Protestant chur-ches in China. Raids became fre-quent after the leader of the Chur-ch signed a “Joint Statement by Pastors: A Declaration for the Sake of the Christian Faith” by Pastor Wang Yi of the Chengdu Early Rain Covenant Church in 2018. The document condemned the persecution of Christians in China and openly refused to obey the government’s order asking all Protestant Churches to join the Three-Self Church.
Officially atheist China’s con-stitution allows freedom of reli-gion or belief. It legally recogni-zes five organized religions – Bu-ddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholi-cism and Protestantism. All reli-gious groups are required to regi-ster with the government and shou-ld obtain prior permission for acti-vities as per the rules. The Chine-se Community Party is accused by rights groups as one of the world’s worst violators of religi-ous freedom due to the persecu-tion of both recognized and unre-cognized religious groups. China has intensified its crackdown on religious groups and activities since Xi Jinping became president in 2013.