Officials Harass Protestant House Churches, Leaders

Chinese officials in Beijing municipality and Jilin province disrupted two Protestant house church services and briefly detained one house church leader in separate incidents in late 2005 and early 2006, according to a January 16 report of the China Aid Association (CAA), a U.S. NGO that monitors the religious freedom of house church Protestants.

• Officials detained and questioned Jin Tianming, a Protestant house church pastor in Beijing, in late December 2005, releasing him after one night of detention.
• On January 4, 2006, officials in Changchun city, Jilin province, disrupted a Protestant house church service, ordering the members to move the service to a government-approved Protestant church. Officials interrogated Cui Guojun, the church's pastor, for three hours before releasing him.
• On January 8 and again on January 15, 2006, officials harassed members of the Beijing Ark House Church, a small, 20-30 member house church in the Chinese capital attended by some prominent Chinese intellectuals and lawyers. Officials have pressed the leaseholder of the place where the church meets to end the gatherings of believers. An official beat one house church member who videotaped the harassment, but CAA reports no detentions in this incident. Members of the Beijing Ark House Church include Gao Zhisheng, the well-known human rights lawyer, who published a report on January 15, 2006, on the CAA Web site about the government persecution against him and about the raids earlier in the month on the Ark House Church.

The number of detentions of Protestant house church leaders and unregistered Catholic clerics has increased markedly since September 2005. For example, in November 2005, officials detained four groups of unregistered Protestants and five groups of unregistered Catholics. The late December and early January incidents described above suggest that low-level harassment, such as raids on house churches coupled with brief detentions of pastors, may also increase during 2006.

For more information on Protestants in China, see the CECC 2005 Annual Report, Section III(d).