A “World Association Against Heresy” organizes world tours of Korean pastors, led by a convicted deprogrammer, asking democratic countries to deport Church of Almighty God asylum seekers back to China.
by Massimo Introvigne
Human rights advocates and many scholars of new religious movements remember the case of Li Yanli, the Chinese singer, actress, and member of The Church of Almighty God (CAG) who tried to commit suicide by cutting her wrists on November 3, 2023, at the airport of Madrid Barajas while the Spanish police was trying to put her on a flight to China.
CAG members who have sought asylum abroad and are deported back to China face heavy jail terms and torture. Being active in a group blacklisted as a “xie jiao” (“groups promoting heterodox teachings,” sometimes less correctly translated as “evil cults”) is in itself a crime under Article 300 of the Chinese Criminal Code. Applying for asylum is regarded as another crime, defaming China abroad and threatening its national security.
That those deported back to China are tortured is not a claim by The Church of Almighty God, human rights advocates, or “Bitter Winter” only. The United Nations have a Committee against Torture (CAT), a body that monitors the implementation of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment by its State parties. The CAT rendered on July 27, 2021, a landmark decision on a case of a female CAG member, who had been denied asylum in Switzerland. The CAT ordered Switzerland not to deport the CAG devotee stating that there is sufficient evidence making it “reasonable to assume that the complainant’s removal to China would put her at risk of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
Happily, the attempted suicide of Li Yanli was noticed by the Spanish media and prompted an Evangelical lawyer called Polonia Castellanos and her organization Abogados Cristianos (Christian Lawyers) to intervene, represent Li Yanli, and prevent her deportation to China. “Bitter Winter” gave Polonia Castellanos her due and applauded her efforts.
One year has passed, and we see in propaganda videos and websites, some of which are connected with Beijing’s intelligence services, images of the same attorney Polonia Castellanos allegedly apologizing for having defended Li Yanli and promising that she will no longer represent “heretics” in the future. The same websites claim that Castellanos signed with others a declaration urging Spanish Christians “to be aware of their heresy, and not to support CAG members” who try to avoid being deported to China.
The strange declaration is based on twisted ideas about liberty, morality, and Christian charity. I am a Roman Catholic and certainly the theological ideas of the CAG, Falun Gong, or the Jehovah’s Witnesses are far from my own. However, when they are detained for their beliefs, kept in jail, tortured, and killed, I do defend their human rights and freedom of religion. So should do all women and men who cherish freedom and human rights. We can both disagree on theology and agree that freedom of religion and belief is a human right for all.
We at “Bitter Winter” are well aware that Chinese intelligence services are masters of disinformation and fake images produced with AI and other technologies. If what they and their allies report about attorney Castellanos is false (as it may well be), we express our sympathy to her but recommend that she publicly denounces the disinformation.
What is claimed (truly or falsely) is that Castellanos was persuaded by the visit of a delegation of a Korean group called World Association Against Heresy, led by Pastor Jin Yong-Sik (sometimes “Sinicized” as Chen Yongzhi). The Korean heresy hunters went all the way from Korea to Madrid to call a meeting of a “Spanish Ministerial Union” (where Korean evangelical and fundamentalist pastors appear to be numerous) where a statement against the CAG and its refugees was issued.
The Korean delegation had played the same game earlier in Frankfurt, Germany. On September 9, 2023 , the Korean visitors convened a “Frankfurt Church Council” (again, with several Korean pastors in attendance) who signed a declaration asking the German authorities to “expel the CAG refugees from the country as soon as possible.” A similar event was organized in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, from March 15 to 17, 2023. Anti-Church-of-Almighty-God events are also regularly held in South Korea where Pastor Jin and his anti-heresy colleagues have published articles and books against the CAG.
We wonder whether those who receive Pastor Jin knew that he also operated as a deprogrammer and was sentenced by the Supreme Court of Korea for taking part in illegal deprogramming. In 2020, human rights activist Willy Fautré reported in a scholarly study of deprogramming in South Korea that, “In 2007, Pastor Jin Yong-Sik was prosecuted and found guilty for sending a member of the World Mission Society Church of God to a psychiatric institution. According to a news story published in Newshankuk on 24 October 2008, he was sentenced to 10 months in prison with two years’ probation for coercive de-conversion. In 2012, there was a public uproar when the investigation about his complaint against human rights activists revealed that Pastor Jin had earned more than one billion won (850,000 EUR) with his de-conversion business.”
The origins of the World Association Against Heresy can be traced back to the Christian Heresy Research Council, founded in Korea in 1998 and later renamed Christian Heresy Countermeasures Association. From 2012, evangelical and fundamentalist pastors from other countries were invited and the Korean organization was supplemented by a World Association Against Heresy.
Among the participants to the World Association gatherings are, and were, Chinese representatives. This explains why the Korean Association, which was started to target Shincheonji, the World Mission Society Church of God, and other fast-growing Korean new religious movements, started taking an interest in Chinese groups as well.
Indeed, the Chinese Communist Party has a curious symbiotic association with the World Association Against Heresy. The latter is not exactly a progressive organization. A look at its website shows that they indict the Roman Catholic Church for being “respectful” of homosexuals and publicly condemn the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, the largest world network of evangelical leaders, as “heretic” for being also “soft” on homosexuality. The anti-CAG operations of the World Association Against Heresy are often conducted with the support of Ms. O Myung-Ok, a notorious Korean anti-cultist who operates the website churchheresy.com. Ms. O is also well-known for her attacks against homosexuals and Muslims.
This is not an unusual position among fundamentalist Christians, but most of them are anti-Communist. Why do they cooperate with the Chinese Communist Party and its intelligence agencies?
It is understandable that the World Association Against Heresy, a South Korean enterprise, conducts campaigns against Shincheonji or the World Mission Society Church of God. We at “Bitter Winter” believe that these groups’ religious liberty should be protected too, but they have converted hundreds of thousands of Korean evangelicals and the reaction by the latter is not surprising.
The CAG (and Falun Gong, also attacked by the same heresy hunters) do have some members and activities in South Korea but certainly they are not responsible for massive hemorrhages of members leaving Korean evangelical churches to join them. Yet, the World Association Against Heresy devotes unprecedented resources to fight the CAG and tours the world from Mongolia to Spain promoting initiatives aimed at having CAG refugees deported back to China.The interest of Korean Evangelical and fundamentalist Protestants in seeing CAG members deported to China and arrested and tortured there seems to be minimal. Why do they travel to remote countries to attack CAG refugees? The answer is not difficult. Miss O Myung-Ok has already been mentioned as a “special agent” of China in a decision of the Court of Rome of June 14, 2024. What about the Korean pastors? Why do they support a Communist atheistic regime, which by the way also puts in jail fellow evangelicals belonging to independent house churches in China? Who finances their propaganda tours abroad?
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.
