Accomplices: Western Companies Supporting CCP Atrocities Denounced in Washington

At the Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom organized by the U.S. State Department in Washington DC, high-tech companies supplying components to Chinese surveillance systems are told that this is immoral—and should be illegal too.

The Largest Religious Freedom Event in the World

The Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom, now in its second edition, is the largest religious liberty gathering in the world. Some 100 governments and 500 NGOs and religious organizations answered the appeal of U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, and U.S. Ambassador-at-large for International Religious Freedom, Sam Brownback, to work together for religious freedom. The Ministerial includes a closed-door program for delegates and several side events.

TODAY IN SEOUL, KOREA: Press Conference by Chinese Christians Who Fled From Persecution

Press Conference on July 22 of 2019 Given by The Church of Almighty God, a Religious Group Persecuted in China

1. Speeches at the press conference

2. Witnesses telling their story as victims: Xiao Rui and Zhao Lin

 Speech on the Press Conference Held by The Church of Almighty God, a Religious Group Persecuted in China

“The Chinese government’s religious persecution is true. We are the witnesses of this fact: we were tortured and detained, and we fled here for freedom. The CCP government should immediately stop the persecution of Christians, and stop its despicable acts of using our family members to incite Korean media to make false propaganda. ”

1.In recent years, the CCP is persecuting all religious faiths, with its suppression of Christianity including Catholicism reaching a peak. Even the state-approved Three-Self churches are not spared: Church buildings were demolished, a large number of crosses were removed, and countless Christians were dispersed and left without a gathering place—many crying and making prayers on the ruins of their meeting venues. Due to their rapid growth, some house churches were condemned as “xie jiao” and subsequently suppressed and banned. CCP’s propaganda uses rumors and slanders to portray these churches as “anti-social religions.” Under the comprehensive and cruel suppression of the CCP, many Christians were sentenced to prison and some were even beaten to death. In addition, countless Christians were rendered homeless, fleeing here and there. Many foreign missionaries, including those from South Korea, were arrested and deported.

False Demonstrations Against Refugees Continue in Korea, Hackers Try to Stop Bitter Winter

While Chinese agents, hired thugs and anti-cultists stage false “spontaneous demonstrations” and abuse refugees, hackers launch a massive attack against the website of Bitter Winter, obviously trying to prevent its reporting of the events in Korea. 

The Church of Almighty God (CAG), the largest Christian new religious movement in China, is banned there by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and subject to violent persecution, with several instances of torture and extra-judicial killings documented by independent NGOs. Hundreds of its members have escaped to South Korea, where they are seeking asylum.

One month ago, Bitter Winter disclosed a secret CCP document detailing a plan to harass CAG refugees in South Korea, by recruiting with threats and coercion some of their relatives in China and bringing them to Korea to demonstrate, with the help of Korean anti-cultists. On August 31, Bitter Winter reported that the secret plan was being executed. Prepared by incendiary articles by Ms. O Myung-ok (吴明玉), a Korean pro-Chinese anti-cultist, relatives of CAG refugees were taken to South Korea from China together with Chinese agents, while Ms. O recruited anti-cultists from Christian churches. The latter’s number was minimal and, in order to stage credible “spontaneous demonstrations,” Ms. O had to recruit also local thugs who work as “professional demonstrators” for a fee.

New Bitter Winter Movie on The Church of Almighty God Refugees Unveiled in Toronto

A session of the Parliament of the World’s Religions focused on religion-based Chinese refugees and introduced The Hoax, a movie about China’s attempt to harass the asylum seekers of The Church of Almighty God in South Korea.

The Parliament of the World’s Religions is the largest global inter-religious gathering. Thousands congregate every three years in a different city of the world, renewing a tradition inaugurated in Chicago in 1893.

The 2018 Parliament of the World’s Religions opened in Toronto on November 1. Among the events of November 2, A Question of Justice: The Refugees of The Church of Almighty God discussed the dramatic situation of the members of The Church of Almighty God who escape the severe persecution they are subject to in China and seek asylum abroad.

Confidential Documents Expose CCP’s Plans to Persecute The Church of Almighty God Abroad

CCP collects information on CAG members who fled China, uses agents and online propaganda to harass them. Anyone opposing the persecution deemed hostile to China.

The Church of Almighty God (CAG) is the largest Chinese Christian new religious movement, which, due to its rapid growth, has been regarded as a threat to the CCP. It was included in the list of the xie jiao in 1995 and has become the most targeted and heavily persecuted religious movements in China ever since. Under the CCP’s ruthless oppression, often accompanied by torture and long-term imprisonment, some CAG members have been forced to flee overseas, but the authorities haven’t given up on persecuting them.

Anti-Refugees “Demonstrations” in South Korea: The Real Story

On September 2–4, 2018, Austrian journalist Peter Zoehrer was an eyewitness to false “spontaneous demonstrations” staged by the CCP and Korean anti-cultists against asylum seekers of The Church of Almighty God in Seoul. He tells the whole story to Bitter Winter.

Bitter Winter reported extensively about the false “spontaneous demonstrations” organized in South Korea between August 30 and September 4 by the Chinese Communist Party and Korean anti-cultists against the asylum seekers of The Church of Almighty God, a Chinese Christian new religious movement heavily persecuted in China.

They Are Coming! CCP Sends Again Relatives of Church of Almighty God Refugees to Korea to Stage False Demonstrations

 

The CCP harasses again the relatives of CAG refugees in Korea who live in China, luring them to travel abroad to South Korea on July 22-24 next to “search for relatives” and bring them back… to jail.

The Church of Almighty God: Persecuted At Home and Abroad

The Church of Almighty God (CAG) is the largest Chinese Christian new religious movement. Due to its rapid growth, the Church was included in the xie jiao list by the CCP in 1995 and has been heavily persecuted since. CAG members have been subjected to persecution, with frequent cases of arrests and torture. According to the recently released 2019 report of the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), “in 2018, the Chinese government harassed and arrested thousands of followers of […] The Church of Almighty God. Many of those detained during the year—whom The Church of Almighty God estimates to be in the thousands—suffered torture and other abuses, in some cases resulting in deaths or unexplained disappearances while in custody.” According to the yearly Report on International Religious Freedom of the U.S. State Department for 2019, covering the year 2018, “The Church of Almighty God reported authorities arrested 11,111 of its members during the year,” against 9,000 from Falun Gong, the second most targeted group. “The Church of Almighty God, the document adds, reported authorities subjected hundreds of their members to ‘torture or forced indoctrination.’” Overall, the document said, “The Church of Almighty God reported authorities subjected 525 of its members to ‘torture or forced indoctrination’ during the year. The Church also reported members suffered miscarriages after police subjected them to ‘torture and abuse’ in detention facilities.”

Chinese Religious Persecution, Harassment of Refugees Abroad Denounced in Seoul

A conference co-hosted by Bitter Winter denounced a global CCP campaign aimed at preventing Chinese refugees from persecuted religious groups from being granted asylum abroad.

Persecution Escalating

China is trying to systematically wipe out all religions which are not controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), refugees and human rights experts told a distinguished audience at the conference “The Long Arm of the Dragon: China’s Persecution of Believers at Home and Abroad,” co-hosted in Seoul on June 20 by the Korean NGO Advocates for Public Interest Law (APIL), Brussels-based Human Rights Without Frontiers (HRWF), and Bitter Winter. The experts explained how the CCP aggressively pursues religious believers who leave the country and exerts pressure to block foreign governments from granting them refugee status. The conference marked the United Nations’ World Refugee Day, and included an exhibition of pictures about religious persecution in China, most of them taken from Bitter Winter.

Church of Almighty God’s Sister Zou Demei Is Free

Supported by a campaign by Bitter Winter and several NGOs, the former leader of the CAG in four Chinese provinces, who escaped to the US with a false passport, has finally left jail.

Sister Zou Demei is free. This is very good news for Bitter Winter and the NGOs who supported her case and, together with the Lantos Foundation and supported by the International Religious Freedom Roundtable, wrote to President Donald J. Trump asking for her release. It is also good news for her lawyer, Mr Russell Abrutyn, who spared no efforts to secure the result. In March, the Immigration Judge had granted her withholding of removal based on his conclusion that she will be persecuted in China because she belongs to The Church of Almighty God (CAG). He found, based on statements by scholars, the human rights community, and her fellow church members, that she is in fact Zou Demei, she belongs to the CAG, and China persecutes CAG members. Although asylum in the US was not granted for a number of technical reasons, Sister Zou is allowed to remain in the country. And now she has left the jail where she had been detained in Detroit for more than two years, and is a free woman.

Ms. Zou was until 2016 the regional leader of the CAG in the four provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou, Chongqing, and Sichuan. This made her one of the top leaders of the CAG in China, and one of the most wanted by the authorities, with a substantial bounty placed on her head. As all CAG members, she destroyed all evidence of her true identity and went under the pseudonym of Lu Yao.

In 2016, Ms. Zou was informed that she was wanted not only as a leader of a banned religious movement, which was already bad enough, but on trumped up charges of espionage, which might lead to the death penalty. She managed to escape from China with the passport of another person with her picture pasted on it and reach South Korea. Since South Korea, unlike the U.S. and Canada, has not granted asylum to any CAG refugee and it was unsafe for her to live there with a false passport, she decided to move to the U.S. She landed in Detroit on January 24, 2017, where her passport was detected as false and she was arrested.

Language problems prevented her and a few co-religionists who initially tried to help her to make her case understandable to the American authorities, and her asylum request was denied on December 4, 2017, with an order that she should be deported back to China. Her appeal was rejected on May 22, 2018. On August 13, 2018, a stay of removal was granted, based on massive evidence about her identity and role in the CAG and documents about the persecution of the CAG in China. On March 18, 2019, she received permission to remain in the US.

Although Bitter Winter believes Sister Zou should have been granted asylum, we are grateful to the American authorities who prevented her deportation back to China and allowed her to remain in the U.S. “We could not have done this without the support of Bitter Winter and of so many scholars and NGOs, commented Mr. Abrutyn. I only hope that this means that other CAG members will be able to find safety and protection in the U.S. and elsewhere.”

Source： BITTER WINTER  by Massimo Introvigne