Source: Direct Reports from China
Date: June 2, 2018
Xiayi County Education and Sports Bureau in Henan and local town authorities jointly issued a requirement for all local schools, including private schools, to strengthen the ideological education of the students and forbid them to enter religious sites. The document also calls to design and produce anti-cult brochures and banners; to hold teacher-parent conferences and persuade parents not to take children to religious sites or converse about religion with them; to organize teaching staff to guard churches near schools every Sunday morning to prevent students from entering them.
One of the teaching staff, who did not wish to give his name, said that he was assigned to guard a church near his workplace on the morning of April 22 to prevent minors from entering it. The school leaders told the teachers to use their phones to take pictures of the cross of the church they guarded and send them the photos.
Chinese Communist authorities treat underground churches that refuse to join the official Three-Self Churches as cults. Now the government requires that every county, township, and village send one agent to guard each church every Sunday. Moreover, schools must display banners with the slogan “Stay Away From Cults. Minors Are not Allowed to Enter Religious Sites.” The teaching staff is also not allowed to believe in God. Once they are found, they are demoted, and their wages are reduced.
Bitter Winter reports on how religions are allowed, or not allowed, to operate in China and how some are severely persecuted after they are labeled as “xie jiao,” or heterodox teachings. We publish news difficult to find elsewhere, analyses, and debates.
Placed under the editorship of Massimo Introvigne, one of the most well-known scholars of religion internationally, “Bitter Winter” is a cooperative enterprise by scholars, human rights activists, and members of religious organizations persecuted in China (some of them have elected, for obvious reasons, to remain anonymous).
