BEIJING: Authorities in northern China have demolished a Christianmegachurch in a move denounced by a religious rights group as”Taliban-style persecution”.
China´s officially atheist Communist authorities are wary of any organisedmovements outside their control, including religious ones.
The huge evangelical Jindengtai (“Golden Lampstand”) Church, painted greyand surmounted by turrets and a large red cross, was located in Linfen,Shanxi province.
Its demolition began on Tuesday under “a city-wide campaign to removeillegal buildings”, the Global Times newspaper reported, quoting a localgovernment official who wished to remain anonymous.
“A Christian offered his farmland to a local Christian association and theysecretly built a church using the cover of building a warehouse,” theofficial said.
The local housing department had stopped construction of the church in 2009when it was almost complete, he added.
Several members of the Christian group were then jailed, according to theofficial.
A “multitude of military police were mobilised and engaged (in) thedestruction by burying a large amount of explosives under the church,” BobFu, president of the US-based religious rights group ChinaAid Association,told AFP Saturday.
“It is like Taliban/ISIS style of persecution against a peaceful church,”he said, adding that it had around 50,000 members.
The house of worship was “primarily destroyed because it refused toregister” with the Communist authorities, Fu said.
Linfen police and city officials did not answer telephone calls by AFP.
Demolition of the church comes as authorities prepare to implement new,stricter regulations on religion which come into force on February 1 aspart of a broader effort to put religious practice under the directsupervision of the state.
Beijing has stepped up its crackdown on civil society since President XiJinping took power in 2012, tightening restrictions on freedom of speechand jailing hundreds of activists and lawyers.
Chinese citizens officially have freedom of belief under the constitutionbut the authorities tightly control religious groups and churches, whichhave to swear allegiance to state-controlled “patriotic” associations toavoid any foreign influence through religion.
In an annual report last year, the US State Department said that in 2016,China “physically abused, detained, arrested, tortured, sentenced toprison, or harassed adherents of both registered and unregistered religiousgroups”.
China has 5.7 million Catholics and 23 million Protestants, according toofficial statistics from 2014.
But the figures exclude a similar number of Catholics who adhere to theunofficial “underground” church loyal to the Vatican and tens of millionsof members of unrecognised churches, mainly Protestant.
Unofficial Christian organisations are generally tolerated if their membersremain discreet.
Authorities however routinely crack down on construction of unauthorisedplaces of worship and dozens of churches have been demolished in recentyears.