A magazine on religious liberty and human rights
Accredited NGOs denounce persecution and torture against Muslim, Buddhists, and members of The Church of Almighty God at the 39th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Chinese propaganda still claims The Church of Almighty God was responsible for the murder of a woman in a McDonald’s diner in Zhaoyuan in 2014. Scholarly studies have demonstrated that the crime was committed by a different religious movement and The Church of Almighty God had nothing to do with it.
The speeches of Massimo Introvigne, Willy Fautré, and Rosita Šorytė at the 2018 OSCE Human Dimension Implementation Meeting, Warsaw, September 13, 2018
Some hoped that with the new religious law, which was finally signed on August 26, 2017 and came into force on February 1, 2018, there would have been less control on religion. In fact, things went from bad to worse.
Falun Gong, banned and persecuted in China, is described by the authorities as the quintessential xie jiao (“heterodox teaching”). Yet, until 1996, Falun Gong was hailed by the regime as a positive contributor to China’s physical and moral welfare. What happened in the following years?
Between the government-controlled “red market” of religion and the banned and persecuted groups of the “black market,” lies the vast area of the religious “gray market,” including churches and temples that are neither legal nor explicitly banned as xie jiao and a number of other religious and spiritual activities. Massimo Introvigne
“Official” or “government-controlled” religions are often mentioned in China. Five religious bodies are indeed authorized by the regime, although even their liberty is limited. Massimo Introvigne
Since the late Ming era, China has used xie jiao to designate religious movements the government does not like. Their repression has always been brutal, but what a xie jiao is, is far from being clear.
China is hoping to be part of the next soccer World Cup in 2022. But few remember soccer started in China within Christian churches.
