BEIJING ––
Police in central China arrested 130 members of an underground
Christian evangelical group on Wednesday, including three American
citizens, a human rights group reported.
The church
members were seized in an afternoon raid in Henan province's Xihua
county and have been detained at the county jail, the Information
Center for Human Rights and Democracy reported.
Among those
arrested were Henry Chu, Patricia Lan and Sandee Lin, American
missionaries who are residents of California, the Hong Kong-based
center reported. The report did not give their hometowns.
The report
could not be confirmed late Wednesday night.
Those arrested
were members of the Fangcheng church, whose founder, Zhang Rongliang,
was sentenced to two years in a labor camp in December on charges
of leading a cult. Fangcheng church leaders also were reported
arrested last year, prompting members to appeal to President Clinton
to pressure China for their release.
The group
is one of scores of clandestine Christian communities, known as
house churches because they are unable to worship in public. The
officially atheistic communist government forbids worship outside
state-sanctioned churches.
However, foreign
missionaries estimate the number of Protestants to be as high
as ten times the official figure of 11 million. The unofficial
churches tend to be more evangelistic and charismatic than the
government-approved non-denominational Protestant church.
|
