Forum for Religious Freedom Europe’s most successful videos ever denounced the persecution against The Church of Almighty God’s refugees in South Korea. A dark hand (or rather a red hand) viciously deleted them.
by Massimo Introvigne
Peter Zoehrer interviewing Jia Zhigang
On July 31, 2019, Bitter Winter published an article by Jia Zhigang. Jia was a well-known actor in China. After he converted to The Church of Almighty God, he had to flee China because of persecution and currently lives in South Korea. Our article led many readers to search Google for Jia Zhigang. They discovered that in 2018, he had already been interviewed by Austrian journalist Peter Zoehrer, and the video was posted on the Web site of FOREF, the Forum for Religious Freedom Europe, an NGO whose president is the world-famous human rights activist, Dr Aaron Rhodes.
Actually, for a somewhat exceptional coincidence – believers would rather say thanks to the providence of God – Zoehrer happened to be in Seoul for a conference in the same days when the 2018 false “spontaneous demonstrations” against The Church of Almighty God refugees were organized by the CCP and its Korean fellow traveler, Ms. O Myung-ok. The demonstrations were repeated on July 22–24, 2019 and in both cases ended in disgrace.
Zoehrer was able to document the 2018 false demonstrations, and to produce 14 videos where The Church of Almighty God refugees told their stories of detention and torture in China, and harassment in Korea. These videos were the most successful media production of FOREF ever. They have been downloaded or watched by more than 56,000 viewers.
In the last few days, hackers attacked FOREF’s YouTube channel and were able to viciously delete eight videos, including the one about the false demonstrations of 2018 and seven interviews with members of The Church of Almighty God living in South Korea. One of them was actor Jia Zhigang.
The videos have now been made accessible again. The attack, however, confirms how much the CCP and its minions are afraid of truth. In Communist countries, as Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) used to say, “the lie has become not just a moral category, but a pillar of the State.”
Massimo Introvigne (born June 14, 1955 in Rome) is an Italian sociologist of religions. He is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), an international network of scholars who study new religious movements. Introvigne is the author of some 70 books and more than 100 articles in the field of sociology of religion. He was the main author of the Enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia (Encyclopedia of Religions in Italy). He is a member of the editorial board for the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion and of the executive board of University of California Press’ Nova Religio. From January 5 to December 31, 2011, he has served as the “Representative on combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination, with a special focus on discrimination against Christians and members of other religions” of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). From 2012 to 2015 he served as chairperson of the Observatory of Religious Liberty, instituted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to monitor problems of religious liberty on a worldwide scale.
