{"id":46111,"date":"2015-03-21T20:39:00","date_gmt":"2015-03-21T20:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1:10081\/?p=46111 "},"modified":"2015-03-21T20:39:00","modified_gmt":"2015-03-21T20:39:00","slug":"46111-revision-v1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/?p=46111","title":{"rendered":"China \\’ends\\’ anti-church demolition campaign"},"content":{"rendered":"
Beijing has ordered authorities in Zhejiang province “to stop demolishing” churches, bishop claims<\/div>
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On Monday night excavators laid waste to one of the city’s largest places of worship, the state-sanctioned Sanjiang church<\/div>
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The state-sanctioned Sanjiang church was bulldozed in the purge <\/div>
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By , Beijing12:47PM GMT 20 Mar 2015<\/div>
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Beijing has ordered an end to an “anti-church” demolition campaign that has infuriated China’s fast-growing Christian population and drawn international condemnation, a Chinese bishop has claimed.<\/div>
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At least 400 churches in the eastern province of Zhejiang have faced partial or total demolitions since authorities began the campaign early last year, according to activists.<\/div>
However, Bishop Paul Meng Qinglu, the deputy chairman of the Communist Party-controlled Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, said Beijing had now issued an “internal order” calling for an end to the demolition of churches and their crosses.<\/div>
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The instructions were “to stop demolishing”, the bishop told Hong Kong’s Ming Pao newspaper.<\/div>
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The Catholic leader was told of the development during a recent meeting of religious leaders in Beijing, reported UCA News, a news agency covering Catholic issues in Asia.<\/div>
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Communist Party officials claimed their one-year campaign was aimed at all “illegal structures” and not just Christian churches.<\/div>
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However, building code violations were merely a “pretext” for “a large-scale campaign against churches,” Amnesty International said last month.<\/div>
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The initiative saw violent clashes break out in usually tranquil places of worship as elderly Christians sought to defend their churches from demolition teams by holding sit-ins, forming human shields or even barricading their gates with boulders.<\/div>
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In one of the most notorious episodes thousands of believers occupied the Sanjiang mega-church last April in a failed attempt to save it from destruction.<\/div>
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Before the bishop’s claims this week, there had been hints that the campaign was easing.<\/div>
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The number of demolitions fell to just four in December, according to a timeline produced by the Christian Solidarity Worldwide group. The last took place on December 28, when officials removed the cross from a church in the city of Taizhou.<\/div>
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Three Christians who had opposed the demolitions were released earlier this month after spending a total of 255 days in police detention, according to China Aid, another Christian activist group.<\/div>
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Zhang Mingxuan, the head of the Chinese House Church Alliance, said he was not aware of an official order to stop the campaign but would welcome such a move.<\/div>
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For detail please visit here<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<div>At least 400 churches in the eastern province of Zhejiang have faced partial or total demolitions since authorities began the campaign early last year, according to activists.<\/div><div>However, Bishop Paul Meng Qinglu, the deputy chairman of the Communist Party-controlled Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, said Beijing had now issued an "internal order" calling for an end to the demolition of churches and their crosses.<\/div><div><\/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-46111","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\/46111","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=46111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46111\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}