Easter egged

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/04/2011 (5661 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

China’s Communist leaders began their Easter-egg hunt early this year, arresting about 50 Christians on Sunday to prevent them from holding a service that is officially outlawed in China.

It is not illegal to be a Christian in China, or a Buddhist or a Taoist, but it is against the law to belong to a religious organization that is not officially sanctioned by the government. Most of China’s Christians — there are close to 100 million of them — do not belong to the two recognized organizations, the Protestant Three-Self Patriotic Movement and the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association.

Neither of these groups have any affiliation with any of the mainstream Protestant churches or the Church of Rome. That is not to say that their members are not practising Christians — few Chinese citizens would be foolish enough to pretend to be that — but the two organizations are tools of the state. Most Chinese believers of every faith practise their religion privately.

In the Christian community, they worship at what are called “house churches,” private places where believers gather. The 50 people nabbed Sunday — including the two pastors of the 1,000 member Shouwang church — were arrested after they tried to hold an outdoor Palm Sunday service, which is illegal in China.

This was the second Sunday in a row leading up to the Easter season that Christian services have been disrupted in Beijing. Despite the penalties they face, the Shouwang parishioners, if one can call them that, intend to try again to worship in public on Easter Sunday. Ottawa and other Western governments should support their right to exercise this fundamental freedom. Flagrant violations of human rights should have consequences.