A local government in communist China reportedly led a group of workers to two churches last month and ordered them to remove the church’s crosses, according to leaked reports.
The reports come from Bitter Winter, a publication that the U.S. Department of State has cited in official government reports and describes as “an online magazine on religious liberty and human rights in China.”
“A little past 4 a.m. on July 7, officials from Yongjia county government in Zhejiang Province’s Wenzhou city lead over 100 personnel to Yongfu village to remove crosses from two churches,” Bitter Winter reported. “Eyewitnesses reported that most of the demolition personnel wore uniforms of a private security company.”
Bitter Winter posted videos of two of the crosses being removed at two of the churches.
WATCH:
“During the confrontation, a man in his 80s was pushed to the ground and injured,” the publication continued. “According to local believers, the church cross escaped removal during the crackdowns on Zhejiang churches in 2014 and 2015, when more than 1,700 crosses were removed in the province, only because the congregation managed to protect it. This time, however, they couldn’t save it: it was toppled at 6:30 that morning, as security guards banned the congregation from filming the scene.”
The publication included a video of the elderly man that was reportedly thrown on the ground for trying to defend one of the crosses.
WATCH:
Bitter Winter reported in May that clergy from the same denomination of state-approved churches, the Three-Self Church, were punished for not preaching the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda. Twelve preachers were reportedly banned from being able to preach after they gave “sermons against government regulations.”
Other leaked reports out of China last month indicate that people who were on government welfare, including those with disabilities, were being cut off by the Chinese Communist Party if they did not renounce their faith.
Officials “were ordered to remove crosses, religious symbols and images from the homes of people of faith who receive social welfare payments and replace them with portraits of Chairman Mao and President Xi Jinping,” Bitter Winter reported last week. “The officials were instructed to annul the subsidies to those who protest the order.”
Those reports came out of Linfen, where officials reportedly told residents, “Impoverished religious households can’t receive money from the state for nothing — they must obey the Communist Party for the money they receive.”
Qi Yan, chairman of the Huangjinbu people’s congress, told The South China Morning Post in 2017, “Many poor households have plunged into poverty because of illness in the family. Some resorted to believing in Jesus to cure their illnesses. But we tried to tell them that getting ill is a physical thing and that the people who can really help them are the Communist Party and General Secretary Xi.”
“Many rural people are ignorant. They think God is their savior,” Qi said. “After our cadres’ work, they’ll realise their mistakes and think: we should no longer rely on Jesus, but on the party for help.”