{"id":36955,"date":"2013-12-14T20:28:00","date_gmt":"2013-12-14T20:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1:10081\/?p=36955 "},"modified":"2013-12-14T20:28:00","modified_gmt":"2013-12-14T20:28:00","slug":"36955-revision-v1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/?p=36955","title":{"rendered":"Lawyers for Detained Chinese Christians Beaten After Visit Denied"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Lawyers stand outside the Nanle County Detention Center in Henan province to called on authorities to allow them to meet with detained ‘Three-Self’ church members, Dec. 12, 2013.<\/div>
Photo courtesy of Liu Weiguo<\/div>
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Lawyers for a group of Protestant church members detained on public order offenses in China’s northern province of Henan were beaten by government-hired thugs on Thursday after they protested being denied the right to visit their clients.<\/div>
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The attack took place outside the Nanle County Detention Center, where the group of more than a dozen lawyers had called on authorities to allow them to meet with Pastor Zhang Shaojie of the officially sanctioned “Three-Self” church and 20 members of his congregation held since last month.<\/div>
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“Some of the lawyers were beaten,” rights lawyer Liu Weiguo said on Thursday. “Fortunately, they weren’t seriously injured.”<\/div>
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“They kept trying to snatch away the lawyers’ cell phones,” he said.<\/div>
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But he said the lawyers wouldn’t give up on trying to meet the detainees.<\/div>
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Fellow defense attorney Chen Jiangang said authorities had bolted the gates of the detention center against them.<\/div>
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“All in all, about 100 people got out of buses,” Chen said. “They kept getting off buses and surrounding us.”<\/div>
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“They locked the gate and wouldn’t let us go in. I think there were some plainclothes police among them,” he added.<\/div>
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Detained pastor<\/div>
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The church members were detained by Nanle authorities last month after they protested outside the county police department for the release of Zhang, who was detained by police in a Nov. 16 raid on the church, according to the U.S.-based Christian rights group ChinaAid.<\/div>
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Zhang and 23 of his congregation have been detained for more than three weeks on charges of “obstructing official duty” and “gathering a crowd to disturb public order,” ChinaAid said in a statement on its website.<\/div>
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Lawyers said the Nanle county police refused to confirm exactly where exactly the pastor and his congregation members were being held.<\/div>
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“We managed to discover that they’re being held somewhere else,” Liu said.<\/div>
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The lawyers said that after they left the detention center, they were followed by unidentified men in vehicles with no license plate.<\/div>
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“Those in charge in this county have clearly not carried out their legal responsibilities,” rights lawyer Yang Xingquan, who traveled from Beijing to defend his client, told RFA’s Mandarin Service.<\/div>
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Yang added: “There were two people in the car with no license plates covertly taking photos or video of us.”<\/div>
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Church raid<\/div>
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Pastor Zhang was detained by police who raided the church and tied him up, without showing any legal documents, ChinaAid said last month.<\/div>
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The group said it had no knowledge of the church detainees’ whereabouts, but said other church members had claimed they were being tortured in custody.<\/div>
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No formal arrest notices have been issued and the church’s bank account has been frozen, it said.<\/div>
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The ruling Chinese Communist Party wields tight control over religious activities and has launched a nationwide campaign in recent months to force unofficial “house churches” to join the officially sanctioned “Three-Self Patriotic Association” for Protestant churches.<\/div>
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Protestants and Catholics practicing outside of state-controlled churches are typically targeted for harassment and detention by local police and religious affairs officials.<\/div>
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Churches that attract a wide following and set up in their own premises are often forced to leave or give up their buildings, but are forbidden from organizing open-air gatherings in public either, Chinese Christians report.<\/div>
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Officially an atheist country, China has an army of officials whose job is to watch over faith-based activities, which have spread rapidly in recent decades amid sweeping economic and social change.<\/div>
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Party officials are put in charge of Catholics, Buddhists, Taoists, Muslims, and Protestants. Judaism isn’t recognized, and worship in non-recognized temples, churches, or mosques is against the law.<\/div>
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Reported by Yang Fan for RFA’s Mandarin Service and by Grace Kei Lai-see for the Cantonese Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.<\/div>
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 <\/div>Continue reading <\/span><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>the<\/span><\/a> <\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>original article<\/a><\/a><\/a>.<\/a><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/a><\/span> <\/a><\/span><\/strong>
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<div>The attack took place outside the Nanle County Detention Center, where the group of more than a dozen lawyers had called on authorities to allow them to meet with Pastor Zhang Shaojie of the officially sanctioned "Three-Self" church and 20 members of his congregation held since last month.<\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ChinaHumanRights","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36955\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}